Eliot was twenty-two when he wrote this, a young American in Europe, and the poem announced modernism with its fog that rubs against the windowpanes, its mermaids singing each to each. Prufrock is paralyzed by self-consciousness, measuring out his life in coffee spoons, afraid to disturb the universe. The form is dramatic monologue, but the drama is all internal, a mind circling its own inadequacy. Do I dare to eat a peach? The question is funny and heartbreaking. Pound recognized it immediately as the real thing. Modern poetry could not begin until someone wrote this poem. Eliot wrote it.