Closing Remarks

Criticism should take on board the traditions of Blackmur, Auerbach, and Said to deal philologically and lovingly with the human history recorded and created in the use of language. Poetry especially is the vestibule for critics who understand that categorical and conceptual knowledge is professionally and economically productive but imaginatively and humanely weak and undesirable. The various papers that made up this conference at UCLA illustrated the best results of a secular humanistic scholarship produced by poetically sensitive readers.