I perceived that I myself had always been a New Englander in the South West [meaning St. Louis, Missouri], and a South Westerner in New England.” This comment of T. S. Eliot’s, referring to his childhood and youth in the United States, was published in 1928—a year after he had become an English subject and had entered the Church of England. About thirty years later, in an interview conducted in New York, he affirmed that his poetry belongs in the tradition of American literature: “I’d say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in...