An Answer To Barbara Christian's Question

I know I have discussed Feminist Critic Barbara Christian's article "The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism" before in a previous post, but I wanted to bring up a question she asks in her article because I feel it fits well with T.S. Eliot's discussion in Tradition and Individual Talent. In her article, Christian calls on feminist critics, and more importantly artists everywhere, to remember to recognize the "low" places where are is created, such as in the home. Christian displays a considerable amount of frustration with critics who focus most of their time on the classic writers. She asks the slightly comical but incredibly insightful question: "Why are we so riveted with male thinkers, preferably dead or European?" When I first read this question I could really resonate with what Christian was expressing. However, after reading T.S. Eliot's essay, I have seen a completely different side that could quite possibly answer Christian's question.

In his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot expresses that "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead" (Eliot, 1093). I found this viewpoint very interesting. Does this mean that a poet cannot really be a poet unless he has been measured and exceeded those who have gone before him? What if a poet, for some reason, cannot measure up to or be compared easily to the dead poets? Does this make his art and poetry irrelevant or unacceptable? Refusing to accept the poetry of a man because his creation does not in same way relate to the writings of men who have passed away does not encourage new ideas of any kind and to me, seems a little dangerous and neoclassical. Eliot states later down the page that "[poetry's] fitting in is a test of it's value" (Eliot, 1093). This again I feel is dangerous, as "fitting in" suggests to me that poetry has to be created a certain way for is to succeed. I don't really like this idea at all.

I wonder what it would be like for Christian and Eliot to talk over these issues. I can almost imagine the conversation in my head and can predict that it probably would not go so well...