The Antiphon The University of Maryland. In 1954, once Barnes had completed writing the play, she sent it to T. S. Eliot at Faber & Faber, who had previously published "Nightwood" and with whom she had developed a strong friendship. Eliot was initially very uncertain of the play's merits, indeed in a letter responding to it he explained that he had struggled to fully comprehend it. Nonetheless, he enlisted the poet and critic Edwin Muir to read the manuscript, who claimed the play "a work of genius and utterly absurd." Muir did, however, suggest some editorial changes, especially to the first act,
T. S. Eliot And the writers of "Time" magazine were similarly baffled by a challenging poem like "The Waste Land". John Crowe Ransom wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work but also had positive things to say. For instance, though Ransom negatively criticised "The Waste Land" for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not completely condemnatory of Eliot's work and admitted that Eliot was a talented poet. Addressing some of the common criticisms directed against "The Waste Land" at the time, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems at first sight remarkably disconnected and confused... [however] a closer view of the poem does more than illuminate the