Welcome back to the daily poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by T.S. Eliot, Thomas Stearns Elliott, who lived from 1888 to 1965, and was absolutely

one of the most important poets of the 20th century.

The poem that I'm going to read today is a little bit long, as many of Elliot's poems are, of course,

but it is called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

It was written when he was 27 years old, and it was the poem that gained him some recognition. It's considered a masterpiece of

the modernist movement. This was about seven years before he published the wasteland and 10 years before he

published the Hollow Men. I'm not going to give too many comments today on this because it's a

couple pages long. I'm going to go ahead and just read it.

It just felt like the right time to go ahead and do that. And this might be one of those poems anyway,

which is worth at first just hearing a couple of times. So I'll only read it once, but of course you can go back and replay this episode. So here it is. T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred

Proofrock.

Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table.

Let us go through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats of restless nights

in one-night cheap hotels, and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells.

Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming

question.

Oh, do not ask what is it?

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes.

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes, licked its tongue

...