Thomas Stearns Eliot was an outstanding poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic, and editor. Considered as one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language modernist poetry.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 years and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British Citizen in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American citizenship.

Being a subversive outsider, he became the most celebrated poet of the 20th century – a world poet, who changed the way we think.

The young immigrant poet got a rejection for his poem disappointingly puritanical. But four years earlier, at the age of 22, he had completed his first masterpiece.

At least one editor considered it's borderline insane; another was “unable to make head or tail” of it. Its title was “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”.

Prufrock’s “Love Song” first appeared in the US, tucked away towards the back of a small magazine, probably because the editor did not greatly care for it.

Whispers of Immortality 

-by T. S. Eliot

WEBSTER was much possessed by death

And saw the skull beneath the skin;

And breastless creatures underground

Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls

Stared from the sockets of the eyes!

He knew that thought clings round dead limbs

Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another

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