Why literary study demands community

It takes a conversation

I used to think that appreciating literature meant reading carefully, alone, with a pencil in hand. And while there’s merit in solitary study, I’ve come to realize that I can’t fully appreciate literature on my own. It really takes a conversation and a community of other readers.

This truth struck me again in a recent Versed~ seminar, where we read and discussed T. S. Eliot’s critique of Gerard Manley Hopkins. In his book After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934), Eliot accuses Hopkins of three things: (1) he suggests that Hopkins is not rooted in tradition; (2) has a narrow range, and (3) he lacks “inevitability.”

As we challenged and questioned, something beautiful happened. The seminar became a live inquiry into what tradition, range, greatness and literary appreciation really mean. And it reminded me why we gather each week in Versed~ to think carefully, read deeply, and sometimes push back on canonical critics.

Here’s a glimpse of where the conversation led us.

Critique 1: Is Hopkins Really Unrooted?

Eliot seems to suggest that Hopkins lacks the cultural rootedness that nourishes major poetic achievement, that his success is accidental. He regards Hopkins as lacking the cultural density and historical grounding of those whom he considers great poets (e.g., Pound and Yeats).

Some of us reasoned that Eliot assumes that “tradition” means his tradition: the classical-Christian-humanist lineage he defined in Tradition and the Individual Talent. But one participant rightly challenged that. Hopkins, we noted, is deeply rooted. He’s just rooted in a different soil.

Hopkins’s poetry emerges from a rich theological and devotional tradition. His imagery draws on medieval sacramental logic, the incarnational theology of Duns Scotus, practices of Ignatian contemplation, and metaphysical poetics, especially those of George Herbert. One reader made a beautiful connection between Hopkins and George Herbert. Another noted the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux and even premodern physiology in Hopkins’s vision of nature as spiritually radiant.

To ground our criticism in textual analysis, we collaboratively annotated Hopkins’s “The Starlight Night” and noted instances of devotional allusions rooted in theological and poetic traditions. Others emphasized the sacramental imagination animating Hopkins’s poems.

The general consensus: Hopkins is rooted in a tradition, but it’s one that Eliot either overlooked or chose not to recognize.

Critique 2: Range or Devotion?

Eliot’s second critique: Hopkins is narrow. His themes and style are idiosyncratic, repetitive, even imitable.

A few readers pushed back without reserve. Others agreed with Eliot, but argued that range wasn’t what Hopkins was interested in. He was more concerned with depth. His spiritual commitments shaped the boundaries of his themes, true, but within those boundaries, we find variety: desolation, rapture, sensory wonder, philosophical subtlety.

One reader noted that Hopkins’s “narrowness” was really a rare gift of concentration, a monastic attentiveness. It involves a poetic narrowing of the aperture so that the particularity of his vision could come into focus. Another pointed out the irony that Eliot himself circled a very tight range of moods and methods, especially in The Waste Land.

Critique 3: What Counts as “Inevitable” Anyway?

Eliot’s third charge: Hopkins’s poetry accumulates without development. It lacks inevitability.

What does “inevitably” mean? Clearly some kind of development of thought; perhaps, a sense of realization. One member turned to Harold Bloom’s use of the word, which means fulfillment. A line is inevitable when it feels like it had to be; when it fits both form and feeling. It’s a great word. We all added it to our lexicon of critical terms.

Eliot may be right here. Hopkins’s poetics is not one of development. He is more interested in revelation. He wants to widen the imaginative aperture of our perception. One member suggested that his poems move by paradox and surprise by creating meaning through juxtaposition and intensity. Hopkins requires the reader to return, to contemplate, to participate in the unfolding vision. His is a poetics of contemplative dilation rather than development. Each line is a deepening gaze. One reader beautifully described his poetics as “a conversion of attention,” in which accumulation is truly intensification. Hopkins doesn’t move forward; he moves inward.

Eliot’s word “accumulation” and “inevitability” don’t quite do it justice.

So Why Does This Matter?

At some point, someone asked: Why should Eliot’s opinion even matter to us?

Fair question. It’s not like Eliot’s word is the final say. Eliot was a towering figure in 20th-century criticism. He helped shape the canon readers continue to inherit. His influence is still evident on college syllabi. As one reader said, Eliot was the “the ultimate insider”—an editor, a lecturer, a cultural gatekeeper, a man with influence and a club membership. Hopkins, by contrast, was the outsider: unpublished in his lifetime, poor, marginalized, lonely, and obedient to a spiritual calling Eliot did not share. That contrast itself became one of the most moving threads of our discussion.

So we revisit Eliot’s critique to reckon with the authority it holds. If we believe that Hopkins’s poetry is rich with both tradition and originality, then challenging Eliot becomes a necessary act of literary rebalancing. To understand how the canon was shaped is to understand how to revise it. And in our own small way, we join a seat at the table and participate in the acts of reading and appreciating poetry that continue to unfold.

This conversation was part of a series of seminars in my course The Poetics of Enchantment, hosted through the Versed~ Community. We meet each week to read literature slowly, critically, receptively, and with room for wonder. If that sounds like your kind of reading, you’re invited to join us! Sign up at https://versedcommunity.mn.co/