Explain yourselves, W&B

With so much attention given to the happenings of a poem after its read, seems like Wimsatt and Beardsley place much emphasis on responsible reading. But what does that entail? A reader can't derive too much meaning from the psychological origins of the poem (the intentional fallacy). Nor can a reader place too much stock in the psychological effects of the poem (the affective fallacy). And both fallacies, per W & B, end in relativism.

So the object of reading should be preserving the entity of the poem itself. Fair enough. But how? If poems belong to the public, neither authors nor critics, then meaning is left to the public. A convergence of meaning perhaps? A multi-faceted meaning? A cooperation between the poem's meaning, the poet's meaning, and the public's meaning? Would Wimsatt and Beardsley consider that legit? Probably not.

Text itself, I guess.

In a way, I agree. It'd be a shame to only read a poem's meaning within the confines of the poet's psychology. (And how are we to know that, really?) How limiting. Yet ignore the poet's intent as if it's not even valid? A nice thought, but it seems unavoidable. Can't remember the last class I took which required reading and analyzing apart from the poet's (oftentimes murky) history. Our Norton Anthologies include author bios before the readings; they're usually required, so I usually read them. But then I'm committing intentional fallacies right and left. I can't help but speculate why Poe (or Dickinson or Thoreau or, well, anyone) wrote what they wrote. What were they feeling? What were they thinking? Bad questions, apparently. Or, at least, irresponsible ones.

For a while I'll experiment with text-only reading. We'll see how long that lasts.