The Value of the Humanities and Literature

The life of human beings and the life of books are intimately connected. Good poetry has the power to elevate and improve us. While poetry that is either soulless or carelessly written may injure us. And for this reason, good poetry is a means of grace.

That is a direct encounter with the goodness which sustains the true, the good, and the beautiful in the world. It's the unquestioned grace of every breath of air, every sunbeam, every morning and evening, and the benefits of the ordered universe that sustain us with physical, spiritual, and moral nourishment. So assured are we often of these graces that we seldom call our attention to them. My name is Adam Walker and welcome to my channel.

I'm a longtime lover of poetry and I hold a PhD in English and American literature from Harvard University. I want to talk about why I have dedicated my life to the study of poetry and why I'll continue this calling whether inside or outside the academy. This video outlines my teaching philosophy primarily for those interested in joining community, my online school of poetry. This video is on the landing page, but it also goes for much of what I do on YouTube and how I teach in the university.

Hopefully, it will give you a better idea of whether uh verse community would be a right place for you. And it also highlights something about the humanities that will never be taken away by AI. The necessity of companionship and community in education, especially literary education. First, community is built upon the idea that the trust of the humanities is not in the academy alone.

The humanities are upheld by public readers, probably more so than the universities at this point. Helpful is Samuel Taylor Cridge's idea of the claracy. It was his idea of a public class of everyday educated people in whom the culture and learning of a nation is embodied. The health of a nation depends upon this class.

Cridge believed it's a class which is not of academics or scholars alone or theologians but of average readers capable of advancing learning in all branches of knowledge. This idea was first advanced in Cridge's on the constitution of the church and state in 1830. He believed that some members of the clary would reside inside the academy but most of them would ...