Poetry Review- T.S. ELIOT

I bought a slim poetry book from a second hand store a few weeks ago. I had been slowly working my way through the stack of literature at the foot of my bed, when I stumbled across this 48 paged brilliance.

This anthology of poems entitled Four Quartets include:
Burnt Norton
East Coker
The Dry Salvages
and
Little Gidding
Each poem is as beautiful as the next, and they have a way of flowing into each other.
First of all a quick summary of the artist behind the brilliance: 

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot 
 (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement. He followed this with what have become some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday(1930), and Four Quartets (1945).He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

Eliot's poetry is more than just stanza's and rhyming patterns, it has so many components of literature it's mind blowing. 
His poetry has elements of philosophy, which makes your read stanzas again and again, just to find the true meaning-or at least attempt.
A key example, first verse of the first poem:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.  

Now no one can tell me thats isn't genius. I think I have read that those four lines, at least fifty times. My English teacher always tells me that an active reader is a happy reader, now I understand. 
             Of course don't get put if your not much of a 'deep' person, as the poem flows well it tells a beautiful story even if (or especially if) you don't read between the lines. Naturally I'm an English person, and like all English people, we tend to look further and further for hidden meaning, analysing and analysing untill our brain hurts. 
Though these are the sort of poems that you can appreciate the simplicity and the complexity (oxymoron LOL) of the literature.


I haven't quite finished reading all his poems, but when I do, I shall write even more about my love for him.


On a side note, I had no idea there was a Nobel Prize for Literature! There is hope for English yet!!