Question 1

Ellen Doré Watson, Director, The Poetry Center at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts"

Accepted Answer

"Farrell's delivery of Four Quartets is as natural, deep, and illuminating as Kenneth Branagh doing Shakespeare. His presentation here was utterly magical. It's really extraordinary how, instead of parading the poem, Farrell inhabits it from the inside out, creating a rich, subtle, meditative experience, in which Eliot's words hover & resonate, provoke & delight."

Question 2

Paul Kuritz, Professor of Theater, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine"

Accepted Answer

"An evening of poetry is the performer's ultimate challenge. An evening of T. S. Eliot's poetry is the ultimate challenge's ultimate challenge. John Farrell not only meets the challenges, he opens the text to the hearers' minds in ways beyond the ability of the solitary reader. He does not act. He does not impersonate. He presents the words seriously, intelligently, and respectfully. He gives the words space to work."

Question 3

Gabrielle McIntire, Professor of English, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario"

Accepted Answer

"I write with very high praise for John Farrell's brilliant, sensitive, and evocative recitation of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, which he performed to a full house at Queen's University in March of this year. The event was, quite simply, the highlight of the term for me and for my undergraduate and graduate students."

Question 4

Seth Warner, Olin Arts Center, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine"

Accepted Answer

"The compelling performances that John Farrell and the DaPonte String Quartet gave us of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and Beethoven's late quartet Opus 132 made the case for a collective power that only exceptional live performance could possibly deliver."

Question 5

Mary Dowd, Curator of Poetry, Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth, Maine"

Accepted Answer

"I was stunned: the poem I heard recited was not the one I thought I knew. John's performance was a milestone experience, surpassing what I expected, or could even imagine. He was the bridge to Eliot's infinitely rich world, in a performance that didn't seem like a performance at all: John disappeared and the poem flowed through him, so clear, so beautiful, and so affecting."

Question 6

Norman Frisch, Film and Performance Specialist, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California"

Accepted Answer

"It's difficult to imagine that anyone could walk away unmoved or unchanged by this performance. We come to understand that we're watching someone who's been on an amazing journey through the landscape of Eliot's text and then returned to invite us to venture forth with him. That's an unbelievably generous gesture—a rare one—and I think the audience understands this and responds accordingly."

Question 7

Annie Finch, Poet and Former Director of Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing"

Accepted Answer

John Farrell's performance of Four Quartets is not only technically flawless, but also deeply moving, as he transforms himself into an instrument through which Eliot's poetry can pour and embody itself, a cry from one human life to another.

Question 8

Valerie Lester, Author of "Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World""

Accepted Answer

Like the rhapsodes of Homer's time, who committed vast expanses of poetry to memory so that they could share their spoken heritage with their audience, Farrell brought T. S. Eliot to breathing, spoken life. This is how it should be: poetry taken into the mind—memorized—and spoken.

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