T.S. Eliot’s Ironic Title, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Eliot, a notable twentieth century poet, wrote often about the modern man and his incapacity to make decisive movements. In his work entitled, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” he continues this theme allowing the reader to view the world as he sees it, a world of isolation and fear strangling the will of the modern man. The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante’s Inferno, an allusion to Dante’s character who speaks from Hell only because he believes that the listener can not return to earth and thereby is impotent to act on t