How does "Preludes" by T. S. Eliot exemplify modernist poetry?

T.S. Eliot's "Preludes" is an early example of modernism, having been written before World War I.

Modernism is concerned with the alienation and blight brought on by modern industrial society. It is also an experimental art form that challenges "objective" notions of truth and tries to capture the fragmented nature of consciousness. Modernist poetry and literature also often tells a story from the point of view of the subjective thoughts going through a person's mind. Eliot's poem is modernist in its themes of alienation in modern urban life and in its fragmented, subjective form.

The poem critiques the urban landscape of modernity by using unpleasant images to describe it, such as "burnt-out ends of smoky days," "grimy scraps," and "blackened street." There is also a factory-like quality of sameness in the image of "hands" (hands, rather than people) all

raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms

Literary “modernism” can be (and has been) variously defined, and the task of saying what, precisely, makes any particular poem a “modernist” work is very difficult. One way to think of modernism is to consider it as a rejection of much that was associated with the “Romantic” movement in poetry, which modernists often considered sentimental and naïve. T. S. Eliot’s work titled “Preludes” might be called “modernist” in some of following ways and for some of the following reasons:

• It deals with mundane, everyday existence; there is little emphasis, as there might be in a Romantic poem, on anything lofty, sublime, or inspiring.
• The form of the poem often seems surprising and unpredictable, as in the transition from the first two lines to the third line.
• The tone is somewhat dark and depressing, as in line 4.
• The setting seems grimly urban rather than focusing on a beautiful, appealing countryside (as in lines 5-8 and 11-13).
• The style is largely reportorial, describing merely what is rather than drawing any grand conclusions; meaning is created as much through mood as through overt statement (as in the opening stanza).
• Loneliness is a major theme, as in line 12. Love is not a major theme.
• Sometimes the phrasing is literally fragmented, as in line 13.
• The setting is ordinary, unappealing, and un-transcendent, as in lines 15-18; there is little hint of anything better than this world – a world that often seems variously unattractive. There is little emphasis on God or on a heavenly world as beautiful alternatives to the somewhat grimy hear-and-now.
• Life seems full of people, but those people seem largely alienated from one another (19-23). Their living conditions are not especially beautiful or satisfying or even permanent.
• Boredom seems a major mood (24-25).
• Literal and figurative darkness is emphasized; existence in many ways seems “sordid” and unsatisfying (26-29).
• Even nature is not particularly inspiring or uplifting; even nature seems somewhat boring and mundane (30-32).
• Human beings are imagined in terms of their unattractive, ordinary bodies rather than in terms of anything lofty or inspiring about their spirits (36-38):

You curled the papers from your hair, 
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet 
In the palms of both soiled hands.

• The over-all tone of the poem is somewhat depressing.
• Human life does not seem to involve much real, genuine, or emotionally fulfilling human interaction. Happiness is rarely mentioned. Instead, the huge populations of large cities seem made up of isolated, lonely people (39-47).
• Romantic desires are mentioned briefly, then immediately dismissed or qualified by a far more sardonic, skeptical, disillusioned, and even bitter tone (48-54).

How does Preludes by T.S. Eliot express the situation of modernity?

The image of the modern in Preludes by T. S. Eliot is conveyed through striking visual and sensual imagery of an urban wasteland, as in the lines:

One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

This quotation evokes modernity in its portrait of mechanical reproduction that suggests that not only are the dingy shades mechanically reproduced and ugly but that the very life experiences of the people possessing the shades have been diminished and bereft of individual meaning by the depersonalizing fragmentation of urban life. The possibility of renewal and spiritual rebirth is presented as a dream world, in which imagination transforms the urban landscape to one into which love for God and neighbour can infuse hope, but that hope is not realized within the urban modern world.