The Dirty Verses of T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was a modernist essayist, playwright, literary and social critic. His most famous works include "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".

As a young man, Eliot wrote several bawdy, scatological poems that were never intended for publication. In 1922, Eliot sold an early notebook full of rude verse to his friend, John Quinn, for $140, with the instructions ''I beg you fervently to keep them to yourself and see that they are never printed.' For the rest of Eliot's life his wishes were honoured, but in 1996 the notebook was published as a collection titled Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917.

---

The Triumph of Bullshit

Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward, insipid and horribly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotion that turn isiculous,
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out "this stuff is too stiff for us"-
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannon fumiferous
Engines vaporous- all this will pass;
Quite innocent, -"he only wants to make shiver us."
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.