Pound vs. Eliot

[lainey]

hi lainey. great to see you jumping in. you and everyone else here can respond to all or part or none of any post in the discussion forums.

for me, once a writer throws their poetry to the masses. it's a done deal. when we/i say the poem no longer belongs to the poet, we're talking about intent, the text always belongs to the poet and plagiarism should be taken really seriously less everyone steals everyone elses work and claim the text their own. the poet can't tell us what we see, can't tell us how to read it. can't tell us we're missing something. the poem now belongs to me. (to read, dissect applaud etc, but not to steal)

I'm not sure what you mean by intent. It seems like you're saying that intention is concerned with how the writer wants a reader to respond to a poem, but this kind of intention can be relinquished and probably has been by many writers, e.g. , writers who realise they can't control what a reader thinks, and so want the poem to 'stand out on its own.' This is why I think intention serves a more fundamental purpose in the writing process and encompasses more than just how the writer intends the reader to react.

The more I think about intention, in poetry at least, the more I start to realise how random/arbitrary it is.

And thank you, wow this is a friendly forum!