The Waste Land

The Waste Land is arguably the most important poem of the twentieth century. First published in the United States by Boni & Liveright in 1922, this landmark reissue of the first edition, now back with its original publisher, includes a new introduction by Paul Muldoon, showcasing the poem's searing power and strange, jarring beauty. With a modernist design that matches the original, this edition allows contemporary readers to experience the poem the way readers would have seen it for the first time.

As Muldoon writes, "It's almost impossible to think of a world in which The Waste Land did not exist. So profound has its influence been not only on twentieth-century poetry but on how we’ve come to view the century as a whole, the poem itself risks being taken for granted." Famously elliptical, wildly allusive, at once transcendent and bleak, The Waste Land defined modernity after the First World War, forever transforming our understanding of ourselves, the broken world we live in, and the literature that was meant to make sense of it. In a voice that is arch, ironic, almost ebullient, and yet world-weary and tragic, T. S. Eliot mixes and remixes, drawing on a cast of ghosts to create a new literature for a new world. In the words of Edmund Wilson, "Eliot…is one of our only authentic poets…[The Waste Land is] one triumph after another."

Published here in its original edition, T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece returns to its first American home with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon.

The first edition of T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece reappears with a major introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Muldoon.

“One of the most moving and original poems of our time" (Conrad Aiken), The Waste Land is arguably the most important poem of the twentieth century. First published by Boni & Liveright in 1922, this landmark reissue of the first edition, now back with its original publisher, includes a new introduction by Paul Muldoon, showcasing the poem’s searing power and strange, jarring beauty. Famously elliptical, wildly allusive, at once transcendent and bleak, The Waste Land defined modernity after the First World War, forever transforming our understanding of ourselves, the broken world we live in, and the literature that was meant to make sense of it. In a voice that is arch, ironic, almost ebullient, and yet world-weary and tragic, Eliot mixes and remixes, drawing on a cast of ghosts to create a new literature for a new world. In the words of Edmund Wilson, “Eliot . . . is one of our only authentic poets. . . . [The Waste Land is] one triumph after another.”

T. S. Eliot was a defining voice in English-language poetry. His honors include a Nobel Prize.Poet and academic Paul Muldoon (b. 1951) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel. He currently teaches at Princeton University and is the Poetry Editor for The New Yorker.