T.S. Eliot's The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Book Cover Illustration

The project brief was to create a book cover for an existing piece of literature. Choosing T.S. Eliot’s first published piece of poetry, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was an opportunity to pay homage to one of my favorite written works. Poetry more than an average story uses symbols and innuendos to add further complexity not otherwise stated or plainly said. This meant it was that much more important to create imagery that was conceptually relevant to the subject matter. Every detail is littered with imagery included in the poem that forwards the fleeting, fragile nature which is love, life and mortality. The mundane in the every day in which there is time for it all so much so it runs out. The sequential nature of life is imitated in the rising & setting suns and a burning candle meant to symbolize the “evenings, mornings, afternoons… [and] a moment of… greatness flicker[ing].”

Other details like “life measured in coffee spoons”, “a patient etherized on a table”, “the universe rolled into a ball”, “talk of Michelangelo”, “smoke rising from the pipes”, “smoothed long fingers”, “ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas”, “teas, cakes, marmalade and ices”, are all visually represented. The stanzas regarding being “sprawled and wriggling on a pin” and the “fog that rubs its back on the window panes”, are further analyzed to visualize the narrator’s frame of mind, comparing himself to an insect while noting the presence of a feline or feminine presence that drives a feeling of intimacy which lingers in the night, also signaling a female force that perhaps revels in life more than he. The face containing the majority of the imagery is based on Michelangelo, similar to the way the poem uses Michelangelo to reference David is the same way Eliot uses Prufrock to reference himself and his own fears. Serving this head on a platter is relevant to both the author and the poem itself.