He was influenced by French poets - Jules Laforgue and Guillaume Apollinaire particularly. What Eliot liked in Laforgue was the presence of the quotidian within a lyrical poem, which is natural for an English poet who is used to Shakespeare and Donne. He could not have found this fusion of the poetic and the trivial in Racine, Mallarme, or Baudelaire. It works on the verbal instrument. This is true not only of our poets but also of many prose writers.
French writers question their language while using it in order to understand or describe reality.
Thus they create a sort of limited association within society. But there is a strong tie between French poets since Villon and Chretien de Troyes down to the present. When I myself write essays on Baudelaire, Nerval, Mallarme, Laforgue, it is not just to speak about them with their readers, but also to speak with them. I have a feeling that a discussion is taking place about the object and method of poetry, and that I have the right to take part in it. Perhaps that is why one hears the sentence, I don t like French poetry , from some people who know the language and read French prose.