Preview
  • The Waste Land

  • By: T. S. Eliot
  • Narrated by: Jon Waters
  • Length: 27 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (24 ratings)

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The Waste Land

By: T. S. Eliot
Narrated by: Jon Waters
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Publisher's summary

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

The Waste Land is a seminal work of modernist poetry by T.S. Eliot. Written in 1922, this five-part poem is a portrait of its time, a work that expresses the disillusionment of the modernist era and the desperation that the generation of writers of that time was feeling. This poem comes from the area just after the First World War, an era in which the world was in disarray. Many young men had lost their lives or livelihoods from the war, families were torn apart, and the survivors were aimless and disoriented at how to move on. This was the era of literary greats like Ezra Pound, F. Scott. Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and of course, T. S. Eliot. The artists of this time turned to poetry and literature as a way of expressing the widespread spirit of wandering their generation had come to embody. The Waste Land's alternating narrators, character vignettes, references to Eastern religions, and imagery of chaos and disillusionment all come together to create an impactful and insightful work of art. This poem exemplifies a generation of artists and is a masterful work from a great artist at his peak.

Public Domain (P)2021 Spotify Audiobooks
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What listeners say about The Waste Land

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Just don’t

There are far better readings available. Alec Guinness reading The Waste Land is available on You Tube for free and is vastly superior.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Puzzling Erudite

By all accounts this is a masterpiece...I found it hard to stay awake and now have a headache.😔

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Relevant

As important as it was 100 years ago. Perhaps even more so now given the challenges we face.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Cardboard

No sense of the text. A superficial reading without
nuance. Terrible German, French, Italian, and Latin.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Very Dramatic Reading

I love the poem, but the narrator's over-wrought performance is just way too over the top.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Bad inflection.

The poem is wonderful; the reading is awful. It’s like the reader didn’t understand what he was reading.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Much better available, even free on YouTube

This title is priced too high for the quality of this reading. Three more words.

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