What a crank T. S. Eliot must have been! He is the champion of contradiction. Consider this: his difficult and complex poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” revolutionized poetry, and many consider it to be a prime example of social criticism. And yet, he wrote “To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.” However, in the lectures he delivered at Harvard, he argues the opposite: he says that “poetry is not written to provide material for conversation” (8) but to articulate change.
Eliot, T. S. The Use of Poetry & The Use of Criticism. Harvard University Press, 1933, pp. 66-67.