1a. What setting does the speaker describe in stanza 1?
2a. What resumes in the morning?
3a. What moves the speaker at the end of the poem?
4a. Identify the impact of the urban environment on the woman in stanza 3.
5a. Do you think the portrait of the world as portrayed in "Preludes" is an accurate representation of the world today? Is the mood evoked in the poem a prevalent one? Are there times when this is more so than others?
1b. What mood is evoked in stanza 1? What images are used to create this mood?
2b. How are the images of the night compared with the human soul?
3b. The speaker has a notion of some "Infinitely suffering thing." To what in the poem might this phrase refer? To what might it refer beyond the poem?
4b. The woman in stanza 3 has a "vision of the street / As the street hardly understands." What characterizes this vision? What does this vision have in common with the "lighting of the lamps" in stanza 1 and the raising of the window shades in stanza 2?
5b. What similarities do you find between this poem and Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "The Second Coming"?
Speaker and Tone. Where does the tone of the poem shift? What is the attitude toward the subject that the speaker reveals in these places?
Image and Objective Correlative. What images are used in stanza 1 to describe the scene observed by the speaker? What emotions are created by these images?
1. Imagine you live in the city described in "Preludes." Write a letter of complaint to the mayor, describing the problems of the city. Then suggest some solutions that you would like the mayor to pursue.
2. Write a paragraph paraphrasing one of the stanzas of the poem. In your paraphrase, restate the ideas that seem essential.
3. Write a poem describing a city that you know, using vivid images.
Sentence Run-Ons. Rewrite the following sentences, correcting the sentence run-ons. If a sentence is correct, write OK.
1. Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet and playwright he lived in the United States and England.
2. His early poems express the anguish and barrenness of modern life in many poems he focuses on the isolation of the individual.
3. Born in the United States, Eliot became a British subject in 1927.
4. The Sacred Wood, Essays Ancient and Modern and Notes Towards a Definition of Culture are Eliot's works of literary criticism.
5. In 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature he was 60 years old.
Catalog Search. Read about using computerized and card catalogs in the Language Arts Survey 5.19, "How to Locate Library Materials." Depending on the cataloging system used in your library, use the card catalog or database to look up works available by T. S. Eliot. Compile a selective bibliography that includes a sampling of Eliot's poetry, plays, and critical essays from all stages of his career.
Selective Bibliography of Eliot's Poetry, Plays, and Critical Essays:
