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How is each poem in Four Quartets structured?

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T.S. Eliot stands at a chalkboard, writing a diagram with letters and Greek symbols representing characters for a play, in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study. — T.S. Eliot T.S. Eliot working on his play *The Cocktail Party* in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, 1948. The letters of the alphabet in his diagram represent characters in the play. The Greek letters represent characters yet to be invented.

In T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, Four Quartets, each of the four poems—"Burnt Norton," "East Coker," "The Dry Salvages," and "Little Gidding"—is structured into five distinct "movements."1

While each poem is self-subsistent, they were designed to function as a single, cohesive work. Eliot developed the themes and images across these movements in a musical manner, allowing them to recur and evolve until reaching a final resolution. This original form, characterized by its technical mastery, serves as a meditation on time, history, and spiritual renewal.21