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: Hi Matt: : How about if I help you with the one I'm most familiar with, which in my case is "Mr. Apollinax". : The poem is about the English philosopher, mathematician and essayist Bertrand Russell, under whom Eliot studied philosophy at Harvard (while Russell was a visiting professor there), and later at Oxford. : The poem is a satire on the manners of some of Eliots colleagues who Russell had met and with whom Eliot and Russell had had tea while Eliot was at Harvard. : Here is what Lyndall Gordon has to say in his book "T. S. Eliot - An Imperfect Life": : "When Bertrand Russell came to Harvard as a visiting professor (while Eliot was a graduate student) he found his colleagues impossibly pompous and laborious. Eliot satirised them and their relation to Russell in his poem 'Mr. Apollinax'. The scene is a house where he and Russell were guests of a snob called Fuller whom Russell despised because he and his mother aped the English manner. Eliot gleefully described Russell's ault on the gentility of the professor's tea party with his pionate talk, his grinning foetus face, and easy laughter. The dowager 'Mrs. Phlaccus' and the Professor and Mrs. 'Channing-Cheetah', bewildered but at all costs correct, concentrate on the lemon slices and bitten macaroons. Eliot who had first met Russell in the mansion of the art collector Mrs. Jack Gardner, immediately allied himself with the alien." : As I mentioned above, Eliot subsequently studied philosophy under Russell (who also won the Nobel Prize for Literature, by the way) at Oxford. An interesting aside is that Russell and Eliot's first wife, Vivienne, had an affair that lasted several years and which Russell broke off in the early 1920's. (Eliot had married Vivienne in 1915). Vivienne was mentally unstable and the ending of her affair with Russell was said to have contributed to her mental breakdown (she was committed to an insane asylum in 1938 and died there in 1947). : Hope this helps. : Tom : : : can somone help me paraphrase a few of t s eliots poems? also a little help with the meanings would be appreciated. : : "Morning at the Window" : : THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, : : And along the trampled edges of the street : : I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids : : Sprouting despondently at area gates. : : The brown waves of fog toss up to me 5 : : Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, : : And tear from a per-by with muddy skirts : : An aimless smile that hovers in the air : : And vanishes along the level of the roofs. : : : "Aunt Helen" : : MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt, : : And lived in a small house near a fashionable square : : Cared for by servants to the number of four. : : Now when she died there was silence in heaven : : And silence at her end of the street. 5 : : The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet— : : He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before. : : The dogs were handsomely provided for, : : But shortly afterwards the parrot died too. : : The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece, 10 : : And the footman sat upon the dining-table : : Holding the second housemaid on his knees— : : Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived. : : : : "Cousin Nancy" : : MISS NANCY ELLICOTT : : Strode across the hills and broke them, : : Rode across the hills and broke them— : : The barren New England hills— : : Riding to hounds 5 : : Over the cow-pasture. : : Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked : : And danced all the modern dances; : : And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, : : But they knew that it was modern. 10 : : Upon the glazen shelves kept watch : : Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, : : The army of unalterable law. : : : : "Mr Apollinax" : : WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States : : His laughter tinkled among the teacups. : : I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, : : And of Priapus in the shrubbery : : Gaping at the lady in the swing. 5 : : In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s : : He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. : : His laughter was submarine and profound : : Like the old man of the sea’s : : Hidden under coral islands 10 : : Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, : : Dropping from fingers of surf. : : I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair : : Or grinning over a screen : : With seaweed in its hair. 15 : : I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs over the hard turf : : As his dry and pionate talk devoured the afternoon. : : “He is a charming man”—“But after all what did he mean?”— : : “His pointed ears…. He must be unbalanced,”— : : “There was something he said that I might have challenged.” 20 : : Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah : : I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon. : : "Conversation Galante" : : I OBSERVE: “Our sentimental friend the moon! : : Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) : : It may be Prester John’s balloon : : Or an old battered lantern hung aloft : : To light poor travellers to their distress.” 5 : : She then: “How you digress!” : : And I then: “Someone frames upon the keys : : That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain : : The night and moonshine; music which we seize : : To body forth our own vacuity.” 10 : : She then: “Does this refer to me?” : : “Oh no, it is I who am inane.” : : “You, madam, are the eternal humorist, : : The eternal enemy of the absolute, : : Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist! 15 : : With your air indifferent and imperious : : At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—” : : And—“Are we then so serious?” : : : : again any help would be appreciated. : : thank you

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