# Poetry — Character guide

> Key figures in Poetry by T. S. Eliot.

- [Unknown Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): This voice drifts through drawing rooms, puppet theaters, and Harvard yards, at once a participant and a spy — noting the parrot on the bar, the pensive lamia, the dead jumping-jack. Its tension is between ironic distanc
- [J. Alfred Prufrock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/j_alfred_prufrock.md): Prufrock moves through evening streets, tea rooms, and drawing rooms where women come and go talking of Michelangelo, rehearsing a social performance he never quite gives. His desire is to presume — on love, on speech, o
- [Sweeney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/sweeney.md): Sweeney appears as muscle and appetite in a world of nerves and teacups, a man whose presence reduces myth to meat. His tension is between the primitive and the parodic: he is both a modern brute and a debased Agamemnon,
- [Tiresias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/tiresias.md): Though Eliot calls him a mere spectator, Tiresias is the poem's connective tissue: the one-eyed merchant melts into the Phoenician Sailor, all women become one woman, and the two sexes meet in him. His tension is that he
- [Stetson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/stetson.md): A fellow soldier addressed in The Waste Land, linked to the Punic Wars and resurrection.
- [Mr. Apollinax](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/mr_apollinax.md): A witty, disruptive houseguest who unsettles a tea party with his laughter and intellect.
- [Perseus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/perseus.md): Mythological hero referenced in juvenilia, slaying Medusa and rescuing Andromeda.
- [Saint Mary Woolnoth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/saint_mary_woolnoth.md): A church personified in The Waste Land, marking time with a dead sound on the final stroke.
- [Phlebas the Phoenician](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/phlebas.md): A drowned Phoenician sailor whose death is contemplated in The Waste Land.
- [Goonight Lou](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/goonight_lou.md): A character in Sweeney Agonistes, part of a vaudeville-style dialogue.
- [Pipit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/pipit.md): A young girl addressed in A Cooking Egg, associated with innocence and memory.
- [Grishkin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/grishkin.md): A Russian ballerina with a seductive, animalistic presence in Whispers of Immortality.
- [Mrs. Porter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/mrs_porter.md): Mentioned in The Waste Land, associated with a bawdy ballad and spring rain.
- [Marie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/marie.md): A woman recalling childhood sledding and reading in The Waste Land's opening.
- [Michelangelo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/michelangelo.md): The Renaissance artist referenced in The Waste Land, associated with a painting.
- [Juliet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/juliet.md): Shakespeare's tragic heroine, alluded to in The Waste Land and other poems.
- [Princess Volupine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/princess_volupine.md): A decadent socialite in Burbank with a Baedeker, symbolizing cultural decay.
- [Madame Sosostris](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/madame_sosostris.md): A clairvoyante in The Waste Land who reads tarot cards and warns of death by water.
- [Dear Mrs. Equitone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/dear_mrs_equitone.md): A correspondent in The Waste Land, addressed in a letter about spiritualism.
- [Lil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters/lil.md): A woman in The Waste Land whose husband Albert returns from war, discussed in a pub.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_21_se/characters