Anthony Cuda, Associate Professor of English, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA This is a brief and approachable work of literary criticism-written by an accomplished scholar in lucid prose-that allows readers to see a difficult modernist poet from a useful perspective. While this perspective may not ultimately prove of enduring significance to Eliot studies, the book is engaging, well written, and will benefit students and general readers; I recommend publication. Overview and synopsis: Atkins analyzes a selection of Eliot's major poetry by using the concept that he calls 'putting in other words,' a phrase that aims to convey how readers and writers understand words by 'translating' them into other words. The phrase allows Atkins to illustrate the similarities between Eliot as a poet (who adapts and translates texts, both his own and others') and his readers (who must interpret Eliot's poems by similar means). It is also an umbrella concept that allows him to address key issues in Eliot's thinking, including the relationship between tradition and innovation, the question of language and its efficacy, the problem of the divided self, and theological matters pertaining to Incarnation and the sacred. The conceptual framework is essentially hermeneutic and implicitly (though perhaps not intentionally) owes its linguistic bias to Hans Georg Gadamer, who viewed knowledge and understanding as the products of ongoing interpretative conversations in which each participant translates the other's language into his or her own. The book proceeds roughly chronologically, with an introductory chapter that helps to define his terms and that gestures toward the enduring importance of the theme. Three body chapters address three major poems of Eliot's career, including The Waste Land, Ash-Wednesday, and Four Quartets, each with the aim of demonstrating how 'putting in other words' (what one may refer to as translation) helps readers to discern both (1) new ways of understanding particular poems and (2) unifying threads across poems and Eliot's career more generally. A concluding chapter meditates briefly upon the implications of Atkins's argument for our understanding of the kinds of knowledge that literature can offer. Atkins aims to use a method that mirrors his subject by including frequent and often lengthy quotations and then translating them into 'other words.' Critical analysis: Atkins does indeed interpret Eliot's poems with insight and lucidity, and the concept of 'putting in other words' proves a surprisingly useful way to think about the unity of Eliot's career as well as the acts of reading and interpretation that his work informs and influences. The chapter on The Waste Land is perhaps the least persuasive because it focuses so exclusively on very selective portions of the text (and perhaps because, by intention, it does not account for the vast array of scholarship on the poem). The fourth chapter (on Four Quartets) is the strongest because that each poem in that sequence dramatically echoes and translates themes from Eliot's earlier work and from earlier poems in the sequence. This iterative richness lends itself to Atkins's method, which is best when explaining how the new builds upon (translates or 'rhymes' with, in his phrase) the old. I found the passages of distinct personal voice in the preface and the final chapter to be engaging and compelling; they reflect openly upon the scholarly life of this expert reader, and I wished for more of them. Conversely, I found the a weakness of the book to be a frequent paucity of commentary and interpretation following passages that the author quotes. On p. 10, for instance, Atkins could expound upon the key elements of this passage more fully; otherwise, why include it at such great length? Other instances appear on pp. 28 and 29, and pp. 30 and 31. I was struck by the seemingly unreflective use of dogmatic Christian terminology in chapter 3: Atkins refers to, in his own commentary, 'the Blessed Virgin' (42), 'the Holy Virgin' (44), et cetera. These are certainly terms that Eliot would use, but critical distance would encourage a less devout rendering, especially in light of Atkins's own criticism of scholars who 'impose theological positions, church doctrine ... upon Eliot's texts' and his reminder that 'Eliot did not do theology' (6). I write this as a Christian and an admirer of this element of Eliot's work. Problems of audience: This weakness leads me to the question of audience, one with which I struggled throughout the manuscript. Atkins suggests that the book is for 'every interested reader, specialist and 'amateur' alike' (5), but this is not the case. My sense is that he is a specialized scholar trying to write a work approachable by generalists, a conflict that results in an unpredictable tone and an uncertain audience. The lack of footnotes and of reference to scholarly sources aligns with his generalist aim, as does the introductory and explanatory remarks, i.e., 'Between The Waste Land and Ash-Wednesday: Six Poems, his two long, major poems, Eliot published 'The Hollow Men' ...' (35). (Atkins should double-check that this full title, including the phrase 'Six Poems,' is accurate; I do not find it thus on the dust jackets or title pages of either the American or British first edition, though online images of later dust jackets show it thus. Could it be a later, editorial addition?) In any case, this is a fair and clear statement to make for readers who might not know the chronology of Eliot's career. But Atkins also dwells at great length on very selective and limited passages (like the notes from The Waste Land), a method more befitting specialist analysis; he points out minute errors (like the publishers of a pamphlet to which Eliot refers, p. 28) of interest only to specialists; and he frequently uses specialized language (for instance, referring to Incarnation as 'a structural point rather than an historical event' on p. 71). I find nothing wrong with these observations per se, but they make for imbalance and sit uncomfortably alongside the more frequent introductory tone of the essays. More importantly, the unevenness has the dual potential to overestimate the knowledge of generalist readers and to condescend to specialists. Other observations: I find Atkins's perspectives interesting and engaging-and useful for a general audience-but not original, a fact that is unfortunately elided by the intentional (and understandable) lack of substantive engagement with Eliot scholarship. Accounting for work on Eliot and hermeneutics, for instance (like that of Brooker and Bentley in The Waste Land: Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation, 1990), would help Atkins to clarify the originality of his argument. Likewise for the lengthy critical debate on the status of the notes to The Waste Land or the extensive scholarship on the compound ghost in 'Little Gidding.' Once again, I sense that Atkins knows these sources and debates but intentionally omits mention of them; including concise references to them would make his own argument more compelling and more original. Finally, as the book progresses, Atkins increasingly uses the formulation 'putting into other words' as if it were Eliot's own, as on p. 37: 'In Ash-Wednesday, Eliot turns putting-into-other-words into a major theme.' This subtle blending of critical vocabulary with its subject is rhetorically effective but potentially misleading, since these are not words that Eliot ever uses. There is, in fact, disappointingly little use of Eliot's voluminous non-fiction prose in this book, an absence exacerbated by the great familiarity (one might say critical saturation) of the few passages that are used. The book is timely insofar as Eliot studies is undergoing a revival of sorts with the publication of new editions of his primary works: letters, prose, and poems. Recent and comparable (though longer) studies include Words Alone by Denis Donoghue and T. S. Eliot by Craig Raine. I cannot envision assigning this book for use in a university course either at the graduate or undergraduate level, though it will certainly benefit both kinds of students in the writing of research papers. Ultimately this is a solid work of interpretative essays by an established scholar in the field whose perspective is valid, unified, and repays the time that most readers will spend with it. The questions and criticisms that I outline above are intended as discretionary recommendations and not conditions for publication. I am not certain that the audience problem, for instance, could be resolved without major revisions to the scope and structure of the work, which are not necessary for its success.
