The Invisible Poet TS Eliot Author:Hugh Kenner Hugh Kenner writes that the twentieth century's most influential man of letters has been "the Invisible Poet" partly through calculation, partly through chance, but chiefly through "the nature of his writing, which resists elucidation as stubbornly as Alice in Wonderland. "Therefore, Mr Kenner's critical approach to Eliot's work is designed not ... more »to explain it but to make it more visible. He credits Eliot with an elaborate system of roles--his principal one being the Establishment man--and demonstrates the relationship of his verse and prose to this protective camouflage. He also traces Eliot's debts to Tennyson and to the philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley, and he assesses his plays more justly than had been done, by considering them in the context of this poetic development. The Eliot who comes to light in this penetrating study is far more interesting than the inscrutable image created by earlier critics. Mr Kenner closes the gap between Old Possum and the author of The Waste Land.« less