1939 poetry, descriptions of various cats-about-town.
Of course there is not a great deal one can say that hasn't been
said before; although I had never actually read this until this year,
I'd met some of the poems elsewhere and heard most of the names.
I think what particularly struck me reading the whole thing, though,
it how much of it is drawn from the life: yes, for example, I have
known a cat who conspicuously Wasn't There whenever anything got
broken. There's an appreciation of the essential cat here, mixed of
course with mild exasperation.
For a man who proudly asserted that poetry ought to be "difficult",
Eliot's doing a very good job of writing the real thing, which is much
harder than churning out verse that nobody can understand without
editorial footnotes.
(For the curious, "Jellicle Cats" originates as a deliberate
corruption of "Dear Little Cats", as "Pollicle Dogs" was of "Poor
Little Dogs".)
Later editions append "Cat Morgan Introduces Himself", which is not
terrible but is very much in a different style from the other poems,
not least that it's narrated in first person by the cat in question —
which breaks the dual vision that's present in the other poems, where
they can be seen both as the behaviour of a cat in the real world and
as the fantasy that one might like to invent about what the cat's up
to.
But the rest is splendid, and great fun to read aloud. I am gladder
than ever that I have never seen any of the musicals or the films.