RaveHudson ReviewDetailed ... Crawford is able to address Eliot’s craft from the inside, to guide readers through the poet’s decisions and revisions, through his individual talent’s complex negotiations with tradition ... Crawford judiciously addresses the treatment of Jews in Eliot’s writing and is especially illuminating on Eliot’s own casuistry ... Crawford is a helpful guide to and interpreter of these aspects of Eliot’s life and work, but he also recognizes that the reason anyone is interested in Eliot is the poetry. One of his most impressive achievements here is the way he situates Eliot’s plays and poems in the complex problematics of the man’s life in all of its painful complexity.
