Language Arts, HELP!!!

Help me translate this paragraph into something more understandable! I'm really struggling here.

Also, whats the main idea of this text?

In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that [the poet] must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value–a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. We say: it appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the other.
(passage from T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent")

In a weird way, he will also be aware that the poet will be judged by the standards of the past. He will not be broken by this comparison, and won't be seen as better or worse than poets of the past. His poetry will be judged against poems of the past to see how both types of poetry stand up against one another.

He should not try to copy the old style of poetry, because then his poems wouldn't be new, and they wouldn't be art. New poetry is not necessarily better, because it still needs to hold up to the standards of old, well-written poetry, but even if it is new and different, as long as it holds up to this quality, it can still fit in.

That being said, to a degree, new poetry often does try to fit the mold of some aspects of old poetry in order to fit in.