The Song of the Jellicles

There is very little literary criticism about Eliot’s cat poems. Even though poems like “The Song of the Jellicles” are not intended for more mature audiences, it is strange to think that a poet like Eliot, who the literary world holds in high regard, would have a large chunk of his work ignored. Poems like “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” are staples of the literary canon—the term scholars use to describe the loose collection of widely accepted pieces of art critics consider excellent because of their innovation, form, style, content, or historical significance. Eliot is a leading figure within the literary canon, but his cat poems are rarely grouped with his other canonical works.

While Eliot’s cat poems do not necessarily innovate or change the standard children’s poem format, and while they do not offer the kind of blistering social commentary and poetic manipulation his more famous poems use, they are definitely good poems by any objective measure. In “The Song of the Jellicles,” for example, the rhythm has the tightness of a mathematical formula. The rhymes are natural and use unique word combinations.