T. S. Eliot's seminal 1922 masterpiece of modernist poetry, The Waste Land, finishes with "What the Thunder Said." It's as though the speaker in "What the Thunder Said" has lapsed into semi-coherent snatches of speech due to a shortage of water. In fact, "thunder" is the only word spoken by the poem's central character, who is referred to as "the poet." Eliot wrote several poems that used this form of ending, including Another Way of Lookin' at Things (1927). He also published a book of essays titled After Strange Gods (1931), which included his reflections on the rise of fascism in Europe. Eliot died in 1965 at the age of 77. Today, he is regarded as one of the key poets of the modernist movement.