T. s. eliot desired that modern poetry absorb and transform the great poetry of the past to meet the present. he provided a rational for the direction his poetry took in his essay on the metaphysical poets:
our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. the poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.
relate this to his technique in “the love song of j. alfred prufrock

Syllable added to a root word to change its meaning : affixan independent word--example run,walk,book : free morphemeaffix that gives grammatical meaning such as tense or number : inflectiona word part that must attach to a word in order to be usable : bound morphemedegree of comparison formed by adding -er or more to an adjective : comparativedegree of comparison formed by adding -est or most to an adjective : superlativeaffix added to the beginning of a word : prefixaffix added to the end of a word : suffixroot word of lovable : lovetwo roots used together to form one word : combining form