Why Read Four Quartets?

Why Read Four Quartets? is offered to encourage readers unfamiliar with T. S. Eliot's masterpiece to take up, read, and inwardly digest these beautiful and sacred poems. Commentary is offered to hopefully make the poems more accessible to a general reader. Most critics and commentators do not seem to take Eliot's own spirituality seriously, or at least they don't choose to comment on it. Literary analysis is often emphasized to the exclusion of viewing the quartets in a personal or biographical manner. In sharp contrast to these typical studies, this book endeavors to show that the quartets, along with his earlier post-1927 poetry (Ariel Poems and Ash Wednesday), can be read as the story of Eliot's own mystical journey to the Divine. Good teachers convey a sense of wonder about their subject. Tom Brous demonstrates himself to be such a teacher in this deeply personal and passionate account of his sustained meditation on T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Brous' expert knowledge is everywhere evident, but his aim is not narrowly academic: it is to inspire in us a love for this poetry, and to empower us to undertake our own journey of understanding. The book is wonderful. --Edward Upton, Christ College, Valparaiso University Tom Brous is a retired attorney-at-law and adjunct law professor. He has studied and lectured on Four Quartets for over thirty years and wishes to share his insights with the general reader.…