I understand Prufrock more and more the older I get...which terrifies me.

22 years old when he wrote it. 22. Think of that.

I like the pacing, direct, to the point, not too self indulgent. Hopkins beautifully captures the resigned sadness of the poem's speaker. One of the best readings of a poem on youtube, in my opinion.

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Still my favorite line. It's the lowest point of Prufrock's sad realization of his life and anxieties.

Yes. He gets it. He understands this poem.

I love to wander through this poem over and over again without any great depth of understanding but enjoying the images which are sometimes ruthless and sometimes comforting. As I grow older some parts seem prophetic and as I remember, some parts are unbearably sad. I love great poetry like a dragon loves its hoard and like the dragon there is never enough. When I was a young stupid boy I did not like this poet but that boy was killed.

It's a terrible feeling when every word of this poem strikes you with clarity and you know them to be true and happening.

To prepare a face to meet the faces you meet... We do that every day. This poem has been my favorite since college and I look forward to teaching it to my AP students every year.

The way Hopkins orates that last line gives me goosebumps

whew! that was one heart stopping '...I do not think that they will sing to me.' "....till human voices wake us and we drown."

Excellent! The exact type of voice that is in my head when I read this poem.

Anthony Hopkins has by far the finest voice. I have heard reading. Prufrock. The more. I hear it the more. I'm convinced it's the reading that's the one for me. S

This bloke has lived and noted in poetry the truth that people live...and it is a thing of beauty.

Thank you for posting this impressive reading. To my ear, Hopkins strikes the right note of anxious melancholy. He becomes Pufrock, & leads me to that overwhelming question time & time again.

I have to listen to this poem/ reading at least twice a day. I think Eliot knew something profound and deep that he just gives us hints about in Prufrock. Blows my mind what words can do!! Blows my mind that he was only 22 when he wrote this!!!

I believe he speaks in a rapid verse because that would mirror the fast pace that life takes toward the inevitable conclude."My life had crawled past me till I looked up and it was over!".Our longevity is so often interrupted by death.

Studied this at school when I was 15... 40 years later am hearing it again. Brings back a lot of memories....

The inconsequential nature of human pursuits and life. Couldn't have been explained better. Our words can stand nowhere close to explaining what Sir Eliot put forth so beautifully in words.

This is so perfect...he really captures the anxiety of this poem. LOVEIT

A truly great poem, one that everyone should reflect on before it's too late.

hearing him read my favorite poem it sent shivered to my spine...

My take is that Eliot, who was also a playwright, has created a dramatic character who is brimming over with bitter resentments and disappointments, and who is in a hurry to tell us about them. The quick pace also suggests that time is rushing by Prufrock, though at certain points Hopkins slows down to catch the underlying sadness. Perhaps we've become so used to elegaic readings of almost all poetry that we fail to see the poem's dramatic core, which Hopkins' fine reading reveals.

Love the imagery - so many favourite lines.

This reading is as good as it gets... beautiful .. I love this voice

I love Mr. Hopkins! His voice is so relaxing!

I first heard this poem from my 7th grade English teacher. The first time he did attendance for the class when he got to my name he started reciting the poem, I was completely confused until he explained the poem to me and since then I have loved it. It really makes me wonder if J Alfred Prufrock was a real person and if there could somehow be a relation if he was.

Thank you for the Eliot's poem, spoken by Anthony. Beautifully spoken and captures the eulogy of life and death.

"Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse" Words which I live by.

This is by far my favorite poem, resonating with me and filling me with dread and sorrow all at once. I think Hopkins did a good job reading this; I can hear the weariness in his voice.

Never heard it read so quickly before but his voice is so expressive

"I've seen the moment of my greatness flicker" is my favourite part

absolutely my favourite poem in English language, and probably one of my favourite in general. Eliot was a genius

I had no idea this existed! Anthony Hopkins is my favorite actor and perhaps even my favorite person, and I can't sleep at night and just randomly think, hey maybe he has ever read a book or something. This is awesome!

You can feel his regret in the final lines. Wonderful reading.

He seems to say, "I get no respect," "Where is the sacred," "Where is a euphoric moment?" "I fear my mortality." "I make no connections with people." "I am Mediocre, I must live with it."

Perhaps one could argue that Hopkins' rather fast speed in reading is reflective of the very theme of time itself within the poem. Time passes by quickly and without mercy. You can't take a time out or ask for temporary respite from time like Prufrock tries. Before you know it, much like Prufrock, you find that everything has ended before you even knew it. So in a way, Anthony Hopkins' delivery may have been quite purposeful in drawing greater emphasis to the irony of Prufrock's claims that "there will be time" when really, in his heart he knows that that's just an excuse. Any way, that's how I look at it personally.

This poem is a shock to the system, and Hopkins’ perception is quite breathtaking !

I find myself crying at the end, even tho I almost know it by heart.

Beautiful. One of my favorite poems and the perfect voice to recite it.

I thought it was a bit too fast until I heard it a second time...eyes shut laying on the sofa. I then realised the tone and mood was perfect...slowing down when necessary. It is after all a reflective poem so one's speed of thought is generally rather fast...therefore the pace was pretty accurate...he is after all Prufrock and Prufrock I feel would have been thinking at a fairly rapid pace, reflecting on what may or should have been....

This poem really embodies the dread and anxiety of holidays with my judgemental family. Had to read it for class and I’ve read it like 10 times now and it just hits me every time. Love literature that evokes emotion.

I love these Hopkins readings.

I want him to read me bedtime stories

TS Eliot's own belief was that once he composed his poem, it was its own living organism. It would be free to be interpreted by its readers. A poem can mean anything it wants. Although Hopkins does read it quickly, in his own way, he probably interprets it differently than others. That's how Eliot intended it to be. I believe that it's only respectful to go on that belief. :) Everyone has their own way of reading it.

Amazing poetry

Read beautifully in the main, but in parts to fast and yet still beautiful. Always beautiful.

i had to play @ .75x, and it made all the difference

The mental image of George Costanza comes to mind each time I have read it since my English Major days

His voice is awesome! Just love it...it's so smoothing...and sexy! he could read the phonebook and make it sound intersting!

Among my favorite TS Eliot poems, along with Ash-Thursday and the Hollow Men. Love how Anthony reads it. I read it like that too, beacuse I like to read it aloud a lot!!! Poetry is such a necessary pang in our hearts. :)

The pace is just right (for me!)

This was my favorite poem in college. When my son was in college, this his favorite poem. What a coincidence! He wrote this poem at 19.

Id listen to a podcast of this Guy.

This poem.... WOW!

wonderfully read. Thank you Debbie.

Thank you! I had read this to myself before, but other than the ending where the mermaids come into it and the brief line about spoons I was not able to sail through the entire sea of words and feel each one until hearing it now. Thank you for sharing this.

the pace is perfect, i listened to different version just before this one, and it was painfully slow.

I think it's perfect; it captures the angst, desperation, and anxiety of Prufrock although I love T.S. Eliot's old, creeky voice.

Pushing 60 and I'm no longer bored by this poem. I love hate and am I'm living it.

This may be the greatest piece of literature ever written. It’s seems to follow me - haunt me.

Omg... His voice.

TS Eliot... *swoon* One of the Eternally Best Poems. I declare.

Do you talk of Michelangelo, Clarisse?

This is amazing thankyou, I also think it's perfect!

I love his fucking voice .

Yes, because we are of a different generation, the pain and uncertainty is the same and we can all relate. Hopkins is gangster! And shows is just how gangster, Eliot was and is for eternity ; )

Thank you for posting this, gloritarendon.

absolutely perfect

thanks for posting - i really enjoyed listening Tom (F4collector)

Love!

My first and favourite poem I've listened to

Fantastic! Prefect! I can't believe. :OOO

I took a test and there was a quote of this, I was curious and searched it up

Andrew--Eliot was an American poet:) He was born in St. Louis and moved to England as a young man. He goes down as both a British and an American poet. This is a great reading! I think it is better than Eliot reading it.

It's a masterpiece

A masterpiece

I should have been a pair of ragged claws... My favorite line

Very good! Well done! Unsurprisingly :)

I loved it at 19 and I love it at 72.

Brilliant!

Superb!

Pace is fine, he knows what he's doing. Just one of the variations I think :) I liked it

I was a total flake and a stupid boy at school but my parents sent me to the best schools and sometimes in a mundane world I want to hear again the voice of my crazy old teacher so I activate the electric mist and listen to poems like this and I am comforted that out there excellence exists. I cannot remember how I once said in Latin - "She was always the fastest of ships" or in Ancient Greek "They sailed on a wine dark sea."

"Let us go then" ... but where and why and how long shall we go there and what happens when we finish? Such a moving poem read by such a wonderful man.

Excellently, read....

He has such a great voice for this kind of thing. "Until Human Voices Wake Us" is a very good movie. Wish Anthony Hopkins had been in it, but but the main character is good, too. Bittersweet.

The recitation of poetry is an art form, and there are different ways different artists go about it. It doesn't have to be commonplace and usual to be a viable way of performing said art form.

amazing!

It is hard to read poetry well. Even excellent actors are sometimes prone to ponderous readings. I really like this one.

G' Job, Tony!

I often revisit our visits, these previous doubts of mine,. Where I had little experience and so little time.

Perhaps this is the best diagnosis of the fall of Western Culture.

💕😍 Wow !

Thankz for putting this up. Im in college in this is one of my papers. Helped alot ( :

Indeed generous to delineate greatness upon the ear of fools

Ugh. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." I can't imagine a more elegant statement of regret.

Overall an excellent reading. Hopkins’ voice is just right and he allows the poem to be itself, ie does not dramatize excessively, as Burton does with some of his readings. I do think this poem must be read a little more slowly for optimum effect.

Eliot also read it in a rushed tone. read slow it loses the stumbling haphazard perfection and becomes the tone of a dead clock. the beat is one of shamble rather than gait. falling backwards down a staircase. the image here is one of collapse and regret and the corrosion of loss. all the lost arms now tossed. the emptiness of past embrace. memory warped and in moments of crisp resolve; abandoned and lost and then mourned. this is tragedy as triumph but an empty shell all the same. in the final stroke; in the pointlessness of all; there is beauty, however transit. but it haunts as it lingers, and there is suffering in the blessing as the shadows dissolve along the walls. this is where the kisses fade; the embraces lose their limbs; where today unravels moorings of yesterday, and tomorrow, slips past the lingering bow and sinks away into the fog of lost horizons. we bury children in our youth. in our old age we bury life.

This is actually perfect. The inner structure of the poem calls for urgency and a certain detachment from the words being said, as if the author does not wish to believe he is really sharing these thoughts with someone. Rushing doesn't spoil the meaning, it underlines it.

Great reading, maybe a bit fast, taking us to the ultimate question a little bit sooner than we might like. Mr. Hopkins can do no wrong.