T.S. Eliot, The Naming of Cats, illustrated by Edward Gorey. From The American Poetry Review, Vol. 11, No. 4 (JULY/AUGUST 1982), p. 9.
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Hmmm. When ‘Cats’ was filling the theatres, an anti-Eliot friend of mine said the poet would be remembered for his doggerel. This was meant as derogatory. But my friend may have been right. Of all the poet’s characters, Macavity is the most intriguing. And I do go back to ‘Old Possum’s Book’ more often than to ‘After Strange Gods’. T.S.’s coziness with cats was surely part of the Saint Louis man’s tireless effort to become English.