At Last, The Real Distinguished Thing: The Late Poems of Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams

Kathleen Woodward's purpose in writing this book is to acknowledge our present need for a model of wisdom in old age. She studies the late poems of four great twentieth-century American poets, in each case focusing on a major meditative poem within the context of earlier work: T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" of 1943; Ezra Pound's "Pisan Cantos" of 1948; Wallace Stevens' "To an Old Philosopher in Rome," from "The Rock" of 1954; and Book V of William Carlos Williams' "Paterson" of 1958. Some of the important questions she addresses include: Do aging and old age bring poetic fulfillment? With what insights into the experience of aging do these writers provide us? What are the satisfactions of old age? How, through the work of these poets, do we come to understand the nature of wisdom?