Digital Illumination: T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”

Digital Collage by Jacob Rowan

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

This is the sixth and final digital collage created to illuminate Eliot’s “Preludes.” You can see the others here. The overall design differs from the previous five and I reused elements from the preceding images to create the suggestion of revolutions and vacancy. This is new territory for me and I would welcome honest critique.

Digital Illumination: T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”

Digital Collage by Jacob Rowan

IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

This is the fifth digital collage created to illuminate Eliot’s “Preludes.” You can see the others here. This is new territory for me and I would welcome honest critique.

Digital Illumination: T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”

Digital Collage by Jacob Rowan

And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

This is the fourth digital collage created to illuminate Eliot’s “Preludes.” You can see the others here. This is new territory for me and I would welcome honest critique.

Digital Illumination: T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”

Digital Collage by Jacob Rowan

III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.

This is the third digital collage created to illuminate Eliot’s “Preludes.” You can see the first here and the second here. This is new territory for me and I would welcome honest critique.

Digital Illumination: T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”

Digital Collage by Jacob Rowan

II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

This is the second digital collage created to illuminate Eliot’s “Preludes.” You can see the first one here. This is new territory for me and I would welcome honest critique.

Digital Illumination: T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”

Digital Collage by Jacob Rowan

I

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

Above is a digital collage created with Adobe Illustrator to illuminate the first section of T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes.” I created the above image by layering and blending found images with created graphics. This is new territory for me and I would welcome an honest critique.