From Bonnie Lindstrom--Executive Director, Cedars Sinai Medical Center Hospice Program

Presented in a professional and non-judgemental style, Experiencing the Soul, will both fascinate and inspire the reader. Author Eliot Jay Rosen has sought out several of the most influential leaders in the field to share a glimpse of their view into the soul. He does this without pretense, but with an open heart. It is a book to be digested slowly and introspectively.

I found myself immersed in the content, reading each chapter with great anticipation. Each of the summaries were full of valuable and revealing material. In every chapter, Eliot had a very creative sequence of interviews linked to the next section, making the reading interesting. The book is well written, it presents the most outstanding review of very well known and respected individuals in the field of thantology.

This book is excellent. The contents exceeded my expectations. It is obvious to anyone who reads the book that it took a great deal of effort, devotion and love to create such a comprehensive volume. It's a significant contribution to the field of current day spirituality.

--Bill Guggenheim III, author of Hello From Heaven

I am not sure whether we learn much about the CRAFT of verse from these lectures. But one thing that we do learn from Borges is what a pleasure it is to be able to find beauty in poetry (and prose). Borges was an amazing man - he was almost seventy when he delivered these six lectures, and he did it without the help of notes since his poor eyesight made it impossible for him to read.

For Borges, poetry is essentially undefinable. It flows like Heraklit's river - the meaning of words shifts with time, and readers' appreciation changes over the years. Poetry as he understands it is a riddle because it is beyond rational understanding; it is 'true' in a higher (magical) sense. And what is true in a higher sense remains unfathomable, a riddle: "we KNOW what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words [to define what poetry is]?"(18)

Metaphors, according to Borges, are the core of poetry, closer to the magic source of words than any other artistic means of expression. Metaphors are so powerful because for him "anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments."(31)

My favorite lecture is the fourth, 'Word-Music and Translation.' It is a real gem. I will not quote Borges on how word-music can be rendered in translation; just a short quote to illustrate how magnificently language can be translated by an inspired translator of genius. When Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century translated 'ars longa, vita brevis,' (art is long, life is short) he chose a stunning interpretation with 'the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.' Borges comments that here we get "not only the statement but also the very music of wistfulness. We can see that the poet is not merely thinking of the arduous art and of the brevity of life; he is also feeling it. This is given by the apparently invisible, inaudible keyword - the word 'so.' 'The lyf SO short, the craft SO long to lerne.'"(62) One small word, and it makes all the difference.

And since I prefer translations true to the spirit over translations true to the letter, I was pleased to learn from Borges that all through the Middle Ages, people thought of translation not in terms of a literal rendering but in terms of something being re-created.

I do believe that these lectures speak of the wisdom of Borges; not in spite of, but because of the contradictions in the text. Here we meet a man in full; a man who stresses the irrational in poetry and the immediacy of experiencing it, yet proves by his own example how the experience of poetry grows with the plain, rational knowledge about poetry that we gather over the years. Borges is also a man who lives in literature. He finds new beauty in poetry because he continues to change every day. And this is perhaps the most inspiring message of his lectures: people who continue to enjoy changing with the new things they learn 'turn not older with years, but newer every day,' as Emily Dickinson phrased it.

This would be a strong candidate for the only book you need to read about poetry. Of course, it contains numberous signposts and pointers to other books that you will want to look at right away.

Borges was a great soul and a great mind. We were lucky to have him among us. Even though the book finally concludes that poetry is like time -- we have no problem using either concept until someone tries to make us define them! -- and that Borges can only recognize it when he sees it, he gives invaluable teaching in the art of recognition.

It would be foolish not to consider all readers of Borges to be students of Borges. Thus, those fortunate enough to find this book can't help but to glean yet more from the labyrinthine mind of one of the century's great thinkers. These five lectures find Borges in his usual vein: the self-effacing, charming, owlish raconteur. His lectures never betray the rigid pedantry of academia, but rather a great, informal tour through literature, philosophy, religion, semiotics, poetics, intertextuality. A former student of Dr. Mihailescu, I was given an advance copy of the book in the summer. Unsurprisingly, I found his elegant, trenchant edit does great service to a fine work. A must.

The first two poems of this collection -- "Burnt Norton" and "East Coker" -- are among the greatest extended poems written in English in the 20th Century, or in any other century for that matter. The last two -- "The Dry Salvages" and "Little Gidding" -- contain, hands down, some of the worst episodes ever produced by any major poet, though these should by no means be included amongst the worst poems. The sins these later poems share in common are the related ones of flagging inspiration and patchiness, both of which can be seen as having their root in Eliot's attempt to take the 5-part prototype of "Burnt Norton," the first of the bunch to be written, and to will the others into being by using it as their model. If, however, this is failure, then we should all be so fortunate to be such failures.

Anyway, despite obvious flaws, "Four Quartets" is one of the landmarks of modernist poetry. Basically, the poems are meditations on time and eternity and, most importantly, the excruciatingly difficult task of trying to attain a little "consciousness" therein. Those, however, who feel no great kinship with philosophical poetry -- who indeed feel that poetry should express "no ideas, except in things," are perhaps never going to warm up to this collection. For those, on the other hand, who believe that poetry is one of the primary tools for grappling with the verities, then what else can I say except pounce on this collection? Oh, it's going to take many readings, much time and a great deal of thinking to plummet the furthest recesses of this profoundly great art, but then again what more could you ask for from poetry?

By the way, if you've never heard the recordings of Eliot reading these works, then you simply haven't lived.

By far the crowning of T.S. Eliot's poetry. The evanescent equilibrium point between a whole set of couples of antagons. The present is such a point, but demultiplied by a myriad of other couples. Past-Future, Has-been-Might-have-been, and this point is movement, constantly moving between those antagons. It gives you a vertigo, the vertigo we feel in front of the present that is a constantly moving equilibrium point. Fascinating. Men are no longer hollow but they are unstoppable motion. They are some light, fine and fuzzy moving line between all the antagons of human nature, of nature as for that. Then a long and rich metaphor of life with the sea, neverending movement that ignores past and future but is pure present and nothing else. Men and women can only worship this everlasting present motion, time and place that is no time, no place and no motion, just unstable energy burnt in its own existence.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

This, quite frankly, is the best poem of the 20th century, and it gets better everytime you read it. From the apparent darkness of the first stanzas of Burnt Norton to the broadening towards lucidity of the last lines, there is much to love, much to admire, and much to quote. You will find lines that speak to the heart directly: you will also find, after numerous readings, splendid little details, which reveal the craftiness with which Eliot handled this superb adieu - for it is the last great work in poetry he has written. The greatest achieve of Eliot in Four Quartets, is the way he manages to reach out to the greatest poet in history, who lived a number of centuries ago, and have the language speak with his tongue, simultaneously admitting that Dante's world view cannot be copied in today's world - but that does not mean that his form of structure and vivid allusions should not be employed: in this poem, the Trecento and the century of the atomic bomb have found common ground to behold each other as not quite congenial, yet deeply related brothers. The past is not dead - it's not even past yet.

I became familiar with Eliot's work chronologically, learning something new at each step. "Prufrock" introduced me to modern poetical structure, "The Waste Land" showed me how literary allusion can enrich verse, "Ash-Wednesday" refreshed the world of religious poetry, and the supernal "Four Quartets" was for me a metaphysical insight of the greatest beauty.

Eliot is without a doubt the finest poet of the 20th century, perhaps the finest poet ever. His contributions to the poets who came after him, and to literature in general, are persistently evident. Eliot doesn't always succeed, and many of his poems seem trite and pretentious, but when he succeeds he hits dead on with poetry perfect in form, balance, and sound. There is the man here, the poet as reflected in his own work, but there is also common human experience through looking at history ("The Waste Land") and meditating on Man's relationship with the Divine and the eternal (Ariel Poems, and most of his output after 1928).

The most discussed, frequently invoked 20th-century poet in both American as well as British literature academic arenas (the advantage of a St. Louis birth place and brief Harvard education), Eliot offers toe-holds, certainties, and assurances to readers even as he satisfies their need to proclaim their own latter-day modernity. Compare Eliot to his immediate predecessor, Mathew Arnold, the man-of-letters, poet, and cultural critic of his time. Like Eliot's, Arnold's poetic output was relatively modest, and his cultural criticism, like Eliot's, exposed the barrenness, fragmentation, excessive subjectivity and self-consciousness of the present while proclaiming the triumphant unity, objectivity, and visionary perspective of an earlier poetry.

But whereas Arnold lays upon the reader the onerous project of reclaiming Greek epic and tragedy, Eliot asks us merely to make touch with the archetypal landscape of the unconscious self and to reclaim the concrete and clever poetry of Shakespeare's immediate descendants, the "Metaphysics." And whereas Arnold in his poetry struggles to overcome his own romanticism, more often than not demonstrating an inability to produce poetry capable of rising above repetitious elegy and brooding despair, Eliot's offers us a body of work that is remarkably coherent, whole, of a piece.

In the poetry from "Prufrock" through "The Wasteland" and "Hollow Men," the themes and patterns of the collective unconscious provide a solid, dependable substratum to the motifs, the repeated cultural "fragments," the objective correlatives which occur and recur until, more than in any other poetry, they lodge indelibly, memorably in the reader's consciousness. In the poetry from "Ash Wednesday" to "Four Quartets" the seemingly unconnected images and objective correlatives achieve grammatical order and thematic coherence through their elevation to the sacramental, to a vision of the "word" not as the product of the self's struggle with the deep regions of the unconscious but as the incarnation of meaning descending from higher realms of purification and grace.

As the foremost representative, even prototype, of literary "modernism," Eliot's work is at the same time as neat and tidy a body of poetry as that produced by any other poet--orderly to the point of being anal. It's little wonder that he retains his interest and popularity. It's smaller wonder yet that the guy was incapable of understanding let alone appreciating a work as resistent to ready explanation, as "messy" as "Hamlet."

T.S.Eliot Collected Poems are beyond any words of a common person like me.

Do I really need to say how important Eliot is? Simply put, this is the dividing line. Poetry has never been the same since. Beyond that, the Norton Critical edition does an excellent job assisting us by providing the reader with many of the sources this excellent poem was based on, as well as many responses to this poem in one neat and nifty book! Plus the poem is thrown in just for kicks. Buy the book! Love the book!

Simply put, THE WASTE LAND is one of the strangest, most complicated, and interesting poems ever written. Try reading an unannotated version of the poem and you will see why even TS Eliot scholars need a little help with some of the images and literary references Eliot uses. This NORTON CRITICAL EDITION of THE WASTE LAND is an essential book for any Eliot fan, new or old. It provides you with practically every single piece of literature, history, and music that inspired Eliot to write his manifesto of the Lost Generation. If you have any questions concerning THE WASTE LAND, this is the book you need...this is the book you want. Buy it and realize how well-read you are not.

Literature scholars universally recognize Eliot's "Waste Land" as one of the most influential poems of the 20th century. The poem draws on a wealth of images, everything from classics of Western literature to Tarot cards, from anthropology to Eastern sacred texts. The title refers to the barren land of the Fisher King in Arthurian legend; both the king and the land eventually find redemption through the Holy Grail. Through a masterful use of language and symbols, Eliot brilliantly portrays the problem of meaning in the modern world --- and the way to deeper meaning!

Unfortunately, many of Eliot's references are arcane, and not easy for the lay reader to pursue. For example, few modern readers happen to have a copy of Webster's play "White Devil" or excerpts from Shackleton's account of the Antarctic expedition readily available on their shelves. Hence, the virtue of this particular edition: in addition to Eliot's original poem and original notes, this book includes the relevant passages from every single work Eliot quotes in the "Wasteland", all translated into English. For the first time I have seen in print, this book allows the reader to understand this magnificent poem in light of the full scope of its allusions. A triumphant achievement!

Subtitled 'How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life' and written by a neuroscientist mother of three, this book benefits as much from its organization as the material it presents. Research, supplemented with anecdotes, is divided into chapters based on sense or function and then detailed chronologically within each section. Chapters include: The Basic Biology of Brain Development; How Birth Affects the Brain; The Importance of Touch; The Early World of Smell; Taste, Milk, and the Origins of Food Preference; Wiring Up the Visual Brain; How Hearing Evolves; Motor Milestones; Social-Emotional Growth; The Experience of Memory; Language and the Developing Brain; How Intelligence Grows in the Brain; Nature, Nurture, and Sex Differences in Intellectual Development; How to Raise a Smarter Child.

This is one of those books you should write in -- underline, highlight, take notes -- because if you are indeed interested in using this information to understand your child's progressive developmental changes, you will be referring to it often. The author presents a lot of research material in accessible language and style, but the book is dense and is not a day-to-day how-to guide. You will not read about colic or how to tell a cold from the flu, but you will learn why your four-month old prefers a little salt in her mashed potatoes or why most of us can't recall anything that happened before we were three-and-a-half years old. Because there is a lot of information, this is not one of the easiest books you will ever read, but it is eminently worthwhile. The author not only synopsizes a lot of research for us, but also defines the limits of research and/or those issues which are still under debate or not yet fully understood, and discusses the evolutionary implications of various developmental changes.

A Notes section details sources so you can follow up in areas in which you're particularly interested. (With 458 Notes, I'm not sure why one reviewer criticized the book for lack of documentation.) A thorough index. This book seems to benefit as much from good editing as exemplary authorship.

You will find that you share the experiences mentioned in the book in rasing your own baby. Explanations are based on lot of scientific findings, which make you feel that you really understand you baby much better. A must have book for every parent to be.

I have loved reading Eliot's book. It is based on research at every turn. She tells the reader what is happening with the different parts of brain development at different stages of life and when the critical periods of development are. She makes very complex processes very simple without dumbing them down. I feel like I understand my child's development in a much fuller way and am able to help him along his developmental path. I would highly recommend this book to any parent, grandparent or child care giver.

This book is thoroughly satisfying on many different levels; a rare thing in todays, pump them out, formula novels. There is mystery and intrigue. A chinese teacher is killed. Her orphan students, 9 and 10 year olds, are being murdered. A tibetan lama asks our hero, Shan, the protagonist of `Skull Mantra`, to investigate. There is the harsh cruelty of the chinese political programs designed to eradicate etnic ties and cultures of the nomad tribes in Xinjiang as they have done so devastatingly in Tibet. There is political intrigue between various factions in the governing bodies of the area. There are grand vistas with the stark beauty of the desert, the magnificent mountains and, last but definately not least, the sensitivity and gentleness of Tibetan buddhism which so touched Shans spirit and seeped into ours as well.
I did not find the cast of characters hard to follow. They were developed well enough to add to the rich texture of this book.
This is such a wonderful read that I would like to buy this book for each one of you. I very highly recommend it.

It took a while to get into this book, and not until after finishing did I begin to "get it". There are many characters, and not being a mystery devotee, I did not "figure it out" (I guess the book worked!) This book is about a part of the world that a lot of us "care about" but few have visited, or penetrated the local culture. Moving west from the locale of The Skull Mantra, Water Touching Stone is set mostly in far western Tibet and Xinjiang. For afficiandos of unreachable central Asia its a real treasure. As an aside, I wonder if the glimpses of cooperation between oppressed Tibetans and oppresed Mulsim minorities are real...or made up by the author?

There seem to be two plots: 1) will Shan and colleagues find the killer(s)? and 2) how will the spiritual lives of Shan, the other "good guys", and those wavering on the edge hold up? At times, the mystery theme seems less important than the religious one. After finishing the book, my central impression was a reminder/teaching of the first Noble Truth of Buddhist teaching...all life is suffering. I would encourage people to read this book and try to understand how Shan and the other characters persevere.

This is a marvelous book, one that exposes the reader to an unfamiliar part of the world. The author informs without lecturing, tying together Tibetan Buddhist traditions and practices with contemporary Chinese attempts to stamp out "minority" cultures while at the same time proclaiming all that they are doing to improve the lives of those minorities. In the story, the Chinese implement a "Poverty Eradication" plan which involves the elimination of the nomadic way of life, and of course the only way such a plan could be implemented is with force. At the same time, the protagonist is trying to discover who or what has been killing young boys while protecting the naive and otherworldly Tibetan monks who have accompanied him on his journey. There are smugglers, archaeologists, talking mountains and discerning camels--not exactly your typical read, but completely engrossing. If you've not read Pattison's first book, "The Skull Mantra," you might want to start with it, but I urge you make sure that you read this series.

If you've read The Wastland or any of the other, more substantial poems by T.S Eliot, you may be shocked at Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. But don't be fooled, even in the simple subject matter there is genius in Eliot's writing.

This is the only poem book of Eliot's that I own and it's a great deal of fun to read. My favorite cat is Macavity. If you've seen the musical Cats (which I haven't), here's the inspiration. This is also a great first book to get younger people interested in poetry. The language Eliot uses is flowery and catchy, and the subject matter is centered on those cute furballs. Enjoy.

"Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," by T.S. Eliot, is a book of poems about cats. The basis for the wildly successful musical "Cats," the book stands on its own as a delightful work of literature. The poems are accompanied by wonderful illustrations by Edward Gorey.

This book is hilarious and very enjoyable. Eliot's words leap and dance across the pages with a zany musicality. Gorey's accompanying artwork is whimsical and full of interesting details. Eliot has created some great feline characters: the fearsome Growltiger, dapper Bustopher Jones, Magical Mr. Mistoffelees, and more.

Yes, these poems are great fun to read. But if you are inclined to look closer and analyze them at a deeper literary level, you will find that each one is a masterpiece of poetic craftsmanship. Eliot uses a wonderful variety of meters, rhyme schemes, and various poetic effects. Each poem stands on its own, and together they form an effective artistic unity.

Also noteworthy is the very "English" flavor of the book, which Eliot achieves by spicing his poems with many references to English geography and cultural history. Highly recommended, whether or not you like cats.

This book was a delightful read! Poems for everybody to come to love! It was also the inspiration behind the musical Cats, and everybody can certainly see why!

Between some of the cheerful and bubbly poems you'll find, a discussion/interpretation of the social issues surrounding Eliot at that time, giving the reader an insight into the inspiration behind his poetry and into his psychology.

Garnished with lovely illustrations to feed and humor your imagination, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats has everything to become something for all of the family, and all generations to behold. I couldn't put it down, and it always beckons a re-read!

Combing the aisles of any well-stocked bookstore, one can't help but notice the ever-growing population of cookbooks encroaching on the real estate of its neighboring "Computers" section. It seems as though any marginally recognizable public figure, regardless of how remote his/her connection might be to the very notion of food preparation, has something to share on the subject of cooking and entertaining. Sadly, yet predictably, the majority of these publications falls woefully short of anything useful or instructive for the individual who appreciates fine entertaining. For those who value this rarefied art, look no further, as Alexandra and Eliot Angle will take you on a guided tour of how it's done in their fantastic book, "Cocktail Parties With a Twist: Drink + Food + Style."

Contained within its exquisitely photographed 160 pages is everything one needs to know on how to execute an elegant cocktail party: uniquely original cocktail recipes, unpretentious and easy-to-prepare hors d'oeuvres, thoughtful and artful serving suggestions. But what truly separates The Angles's book from the competition is its almost scholarly approach toward preserving the fine art of entertaining and its understanding that there's much more to a successful evening of entertaining than good food and drink.

Recipes can be followed closely to yield a delicate pie crust or a Perfect Martini, but hosting, in its purest form, has no scientific recipe; it's something that must be learned through careful observation and practice. The Angles know this, and with their new book, "Cocktail Parties With a Twist: Drink + Food + Style," they've assembled a comprehensive reference guide for all those eager to commence (or perfect) their education on the fine art of hosting.

Cheers!

This book is simply gorgeous. It will inspire you to dream up some excuse to throw a party and enjoy it. It is a "must-have" for every kitchen bookshelf and certainly worthy of display on the coffee table. I bought one for myself and am now buying a few more to give away as Christmas presents.

This book is a breath of fresh air in the sometimes overly fussy genre of entertaining books. The parties all have a fabulous air of fantasy about them, but the authors really show you how you can get the same feel. My favorite is the Impossibly Small Apartment party, which shows how a less-than-perfect pad can be transformed into a cool spot for a glamorous get-together.

Actually, the best part is the original cocktail recipes, which are sophisticated and delicious. Too many cocktail books are just encyclopedias of drinks, many of which are awful. The authors have done a great job of presenting excellent classic recipes, and their original recipes are killer!

Overall, this is a younger, hipper version of Colin Cowie or Martha. This book is a must-have for bartenders or aspiring mixologists, and would be a perfect present for a young person starting out in party-giving (maybe for a 21st b-day) or for anyone who's get-togethers could use an infusion of fun, funky ideas.

The Waste Land, published in 1922 and considered one of the major works associated with modernism. This poem deals despairingly with the state of post-World War I society, which Eliot saw as sterile and decadent. Numerous references to religious imagery, mythology and literature of the past are used ironically to point out the comparative emptiness of Eliot's time.

The Waste Land is sometimes considered to be the greatest poem of the twentieth century. This collection from Dover (at an amazing price) includes this and several other of Eliot's poems. The Waste Land, however, is considered to be his masterpiece, his 'epic,' in a sense. In fact, it is interesting to compare Eliot's bleak vision of a land of waste to other, earlier epics.

The poem is in some sense a warning, in another sense a cry of despair. The image of the wasted land, of the spiritually degenerate human race, is depressing, yet the poem ends with a glimmer (albeit faint) of hope--salvation is possible, however unlikely. I am no expert on this poem, and like most people understand only fragments of it, but what I have gained from the poem I have found to be very enlightening, and very stirring.

Eliot draws many references from the old legend of the Fisher-King, and an idea of what this legend is about (in all its many forms) is useful in interpreting the poem. This is undoubtedly one of the classics in both English literature and modernist writings, and very worthwhile for anyone who is willing to take the time to study it.

T.S. Eliot wrote "The Waste Land" against the backdrop of a world gone mad-- searching for reason inside chaos, and striving to build an ark of words by which future generations could learn what had gone before, T.S. Eliot explores that greatest of human melancholy-- disillusionment. This is a difficult poem, but one well-worth exploring to its fullest. The inherent rhythms of Eliot's speech, the delightful, though sometimes obscure, allusions, and intricate word-craft, create an atmosphere of civilization on the edge-- in danger of forgetting its past, and therefore repeating it. In the end, only the poet is left, to admonish the world to peace, to preserve the ruins of the old life, and to ensure that future generations benefit from the disillusions of the past.

"Prufrock" is perhaps the best "mid-life crisis" poem ever written. In witty, though self-deprecating and often downright bitter, tones, Eliot goes on a madcap but infinitely somber romp through the human mind. This is a poem of contradictions, of repression, of human fear, and human self-defeat. Technically, "Prufrock" is brilliant, with a varied and intricate style suited to the themes of madness, love, and self-doubt.

Buy this. You won't regret it. If you're an Eliot fan, you probably have it anyway. If you're not, you will be when you put it down.