I must disagree with both Johns.

The poem John D. posted is a fine one. The images it shares with only parts of the Wasteland appear in other earlier poems–e.g., Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (Browning). Apart from this they are not at all alike. All sorts of matter sticks in poets’ minds. Great ones make pearls.

Russell Kirk, quoted by John M., believed that Eliot was himself, writing in modernist verse. Eliot famously turned right in mid-career–too far right politically, though he behaved well during World War II, unlike Ezra Pound. But his pre-conversion vision of chaos and distress was written from the inside, and lingers like an echo in his later work. To tie a big bow labeled The Permanent Things around Eliot is too pat. As someone said, if you want to restrict yourself to poets who are purely virtuous, you’ll be spending a lot of time with George Herbert. (No bad thing, but still.)