T.S. Eliot was the quintessential conceptual young genius. He published "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the most frequently anthologized American poem of the 20th century, at the age of 23, and The Waste Land, which many consider the most influential poem of the century, at 34. Younger poets were awed by Eliot's technical excellence and his precocity: Malcolm Cowley later recalled that "Essentially the picture he presented was that of the local–boy–makes–good...His achievement was the writing of perfect poems, poems in which we could not find a line that betrayed immaturity, awkwardness, provincialism or platitude."
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