T. s. eliot desired that modern poetry absorb and transform the great poetry of the past to meet the present. he provided a rational for the direction his poetry took in his essay on the metaphysical poets:
our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. the poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.
relate this to his technique in “the love song of j. alfred prufrock