T.S. Eliot

I was very interested to read T.S. Eliot's position on tradition and individualism in a poet. I've never really put much thought into the idea of "tradition", but it was interesting to read how we can only refer to tradition as an adjective when it comes to writing. We can't say they have "the tradition" or refer to a writing as "a tradition". We use tradition in the form of an adjective and say "traditional". Even then saying traditional is so wishy-washy. How can we determine a concrete definition of traditional style writing?
I was also interested in the section about individualism in poet's writings. It made me laugh when I read the part about how we praise poets for being weird and for anything they do that is different from other poets. We sub-consciously dismiss poets who, though have great poems, write in the same style and tone as other poets.