T.S. Eliot, born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888, spent many summers at Eastern Point in Gloucester during his youth where his father had built a vacation home. There is a great deal of Gloucester and Cape Ann in his poetry. Among his most noted works, "Four Quartets", the third is titled "The Dry Salvages" which he notes is a group of rocks off the coast of Cape Ann (see photo, above right overlooking Singing Beach). Among his lesser known poems is one entitled simply, "Cape Ann."
During the 1970's, Peter Dizozza set Eliot's preludes and collaborated with Jeff Marino on a silent film adaptation of Eliot's Sweeney poem, Sweeney Among the Nightingales.
Listen to Track:
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Or just right click on the links; #2 includes 2 & 3. 1 2 3
The recordings are from the 1977 "In The Living Room" 1/4 inch cassette tape.
The first lines of the Preludes are:
1. The winter evening settles down
2. The morning comes to consciousness
3. You tossed a blanket from the bed
4. His soul stretched tight across the skies
View video stills from Jeff Marino's 16mm film version of T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Among the Nightingales.