I was reading the September 2014 issue of Poetry Magazine a week or two back and came across Professor Leslie Wheeler’s article “Undead Eliot: How ‘The Waste Land’ Sounds Now.” I got a couple pages in and was startled and delighted to find a glancing reference to my onstage working of Four Quartets.  How ‘bout that! Quite apart from […]

And what a voyage it was! It has been seven months since my last entry…seven months without an After Action Report! Why? Let us say that the months immediately following the production of Four Quartets at Provision Theater were intense.  And certainly the winter here in the Midwest (heck, in America) was relentlessly cruel and enervating.  […]

We opened Four Quartets last night at Provision Theater—on the 125th anniversary of TSE’s birth.  Airborne! And we learned that Figures of Speech Theatre’s John Farrell is performing Four Quartets tonight at Bates College in Maine. (The DaPonte String Quartet performs Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 (Op. 132) in A minor as part of the […]

I am embarrassed to admit how long I read East Coker’s Lines 157 – 161 with a patently wrong meaning of the word “prevent” in mind—as in to preclude.  It is even more embarrassing to admit that in fact I had no idea that there was another, earlier meaning: to anticipate, to provide, to go before.  […]

I became acquainted with Four Quartets over twenty years ago.  I recall picking up a pocket edition in a bookstore, although I don’t recall exactly what prompted me to do so.  I carried it with me nearly everywhere.  (I remember pulling it from my suit pocket for a moment during my sister’s wedding party back […]