[...] in the words of I. A. Richards, “As the finer parts of our emotional tradition relax in the expansion and dissolution of our communities, and as we discover how far out of our intellectual depth the flood-tide of science is carrying us — so far that not even the giants can still feel bottom — we shall increasingly need every strengthening discipline that can be devised.” Richards saw the study of poetry as such a strengthening discipline, and when I considered what might be elitist about Cambridge poetry it was the notion that they were keeping the flame of some greater truth alive against the perceived onslaught of popular culture. But to see the poets this way was to pit some concept of exclusive British culture practiced by wealthy dilettantes against more inclusive cultural practices. That would have been elitist, or at least haughty. But the poets were not doing that. What they were doing, together or as individuals, was merely a search, to try to use language in a way that did not remind us of someone trying to sell us something, that made words seem new, that gave us a way to describe the things we aspired to that did not echo the vocabulary that we could no longer trust. This did not feel elitist, just hopeless.