Any New Critic worth his or her—but more likely his—salt loved T.S. Eliot, and especially his masterpiece "The Waste Land." Every freaking word in that poem is working, pulling its own weight. What unity! What intelligence! What complexity!

And do you think that poem is about Eliot himself? Ha! As the Eliotists say, at the end of that 434-line modernist tour de force, the reader knows no more about Eliot than they did as newborn babes.

John Crowe Ransom
King

Look, Eliot was a royalist, so it makes sense to have a king of the clique instead of a president of the clique. He was a natural, because to him, poetic criticism was as serious as a heart attack—so, serious. He is rolling over in his grave about every single comment section on every single website. The critic on the street? You must be kidding. Critics aren't amateurs with a God-given right to voice an opinion about the latest celebrity disaster. Critics are professionals and should be treated as such.

Cleanth Brooks
Prince

When, as Brooks did in 1939, you write a piece called "The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth," you get to be pretty high up on the old Eliotist totem pole. To summarize Brooks's discussion in the essay: "Unity, baby, unity." The reception of his piece? Nothing less than a full revolutionizing of the way the poem would be read and interpreted forever.