Eliot had to be reckoned the greater poet. My friend wantednto know on what grounds I based that evaluation, and I saidnI chose Eliot because with him the stakes were simplyngreater. He went for the main chance, so to speak, whichnFrost never did until very late in life, and then chiefly in anpoem (“Kitty Hawk”) which largely fails its theme andnintention. Also, I think, Eliot was truer to the times innwhich he lived—that is to say, the etherized urbanite Eliotnmay still be with us long after countryman Frost hasndisappeared with the last polluted fogs of the doomednecological conscience. It is perhaps just barely useful to addnthat whereas Robert Frost was a poet we could easily lovenand only grudgingly admire (especially in the light of thennow fashionable derisions provoked by the official biography),nT.S. Eliot’s poetry is something other than the objectnof popular affection. And yet, one’s admiration of him hasnbeen generally vast and conclusive.nWhen we say we are moderns, we must also admit thatnwe are Prufroek wondering whether we dare to eat a peachnor wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled. We are eternallynlanguishing, like another and something-less-than-strongwillednRoland at Roncevalles, maintaining as best we can anrear-guard action to Western civilization’s inglorious demise.nIt is incredible that Eliot, in his 20’s, could have beennas world-weary as all that. And yet this ennui of Prufroek,nthe indictment of The Waste Land, and the catarrhalnutterances of “The Hollow Men” do not tell the end of thenstory, whether whimper or bang, for there is always AshnWednesday and the even greater redemptive movements ofnthe Four Quartets in the offing. This is why Eliot ought tonmean so much to us—and how, for example, in less than andozen lines from Ash Wednesday he may be worth the totalnbucolics of Robert Frost and the gaudy baubles of WallacenStevens.nEliot had a perception of the times which most othernmodern poets have clearly lacked, and he further demonstratednthis by becoming a great critic as well as an evenngreater poet. He early wrote an order of English prose,nespecially in the essays of T/ie Sacred Wood (1920), whichnsurely must rank with the best of the century. These essays,noddly enough, were not without a certain undergraduatensense of high spirits balanced with the insights of a wisenprofessor. Later, some would say that Eliot’s criticism hadnlapsed into mere pomposity. It is the more likely ease thatnthese indolent detractors were simply unwilling, for whatevernreasons, to make the commitments that Eliot himself hadnmade and which his fine intelligence had carried furthernthan they were either inclined to follow or disposed tonunderstand.nIt is to Eliot the poet, however, that one must alwaysnreturn. The body of the work is relatively small, but it hasnpierced the age like a laser beam out of the encroachingndarkness. Reading some of the earlier and more approachablenpoems—like “Preludes,” “Rhapsody on a WindynNight,” “Morning at the Window”—one can still taste andnsmell the city and urban milieu from which Frost and thenlesser Georgians had long since fled. Besides dealing withnultimate questions, there is in Eliot a sense of the terriblensadness and anguish of the times. If all this passes away, as itnmay be biblical to suggest, then perhaps Frost will havensurvived the actually more profound Eliot; but at presentnTHE UNKNOWN TRUMPETERnby Warren Hopen’There is an unknown second trumpet man. …”n— from notes to a Louis Armstrong albumnFor all I know he spends his nights on gratesnClinging to clouds of steam.nTrying to sleep and, maybe, dreamnOf when he traveled widely playing dates.nOr it could be he’s been retired for years—nTucked in a nursing homenWhere a rare visitor will comenTo speak to him and wonder at his tears.nBut it seems much more likely he is dead,nA fading memorynAmong old friends and familynThat soon will fail to trouble any head.nNo matter how he lives or how he died.nHis life has one plain meaning.nThe jubilation of his playing,nA joyousness that will not be denied—nA joyousness that brings joy to this room.nMaking me offer thanksnTo one who from the nameless ranksnRaises sweet riffs tinged with a sense of doom.nsuch signs as we have still point to the continued diminishmentnof a beneficent and healing nature in an increasinglynhostile and urbanized world. The liturgical cycles no longernrelate to an antipastoral society. In any case, even in suchnan apparentiy straightforward poem as “Portrait of a Lady,”nwe hear lines that are nothing less than heartbreaking,nbanal as that may sound nowadays, just as in some of thenfugal abstracts from Bach we often hear the most ineffablenand lucidly tuneful themes.nIt remains at least improbable that any literate person innthe 20th century shall have remained uninfluenced by, orneven untouched by, the poetry of T.S. Eliot. You do notnoften find it a quality attributed to Eliot’s poetry that itnshould touch the reader, but is there anyone in what Dr.nCarl Jung called the second half of life who cannotnrecognize oneself, though in a bitterly poignant way, inn”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufroek” alone? The criticnEdmund Wilson once wrote an essay in which he notednhow many of Eliot’s lines have been absorbed into thenlanguage of our time—even more so, perhaps, than in thenother three great polarities of modern American verse: Frost,nStevens, and William Carlos Williams. But almost everynline in “Prufroek” is a very sad music we know by heart andnheadache.nIn the modern era, we are especially blessed in the meansnwe have of hearing the recorded voices of our greatest poets.nThe voices of Frost and Dylan Thomas come readily tonnnMARCH 1987119n