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TITLE DEED HOW DID CELEBRATED BOOKS GET THEIR NAMES? T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20051009
Author:GARY DEXTER

POSSUM, of course, was T.S. Eliot himself. The name was bestowed on him by the one he called, more sonorously, Il miglior fabbro: Ezra Pound. It derived from a private game the two poets had, in which they would talk in "Uncle Remus'' slang, Brer Possum being one of the Remus characters. Pound's letters to Eliot are usually written in this manner, even when discussing Sophocles and Sextus Propertius. A typical example of April 16, 1938 begins "Waaal Possum, my fine ole Marse Supial...'' and ends with a pseudo-Remusian poem, which, interestingly, mentions cats and possums in the same breath ...

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