Intention and Critique

[Lizzie]

If authorial intent does not come across that isn't the reader's fault (unless the reader is a lazy moron--then all bets are off). If the point is unclear the author probably failed.

That said in a workshop authorial intent is important because we are all trying to help the author execute their vision.

Doesn't this assume that the writer is trying to write something that is accessible to others outside of their own mind? If something cannot survive outside of the writer, there's nothing any of us can do. You say yourself that the secret of poetry is cruelty, and that's often to our sense of what we intended the poem to be. It can be painful to let the poem be what it wants to be -- gotta let the butterfly fly.

I agree with stpm that cryptic poetry is all author and doesn't leave room for a reader -- in this instance, I simply can't help. If there's no room for me, what's to be done?

That to say, I think it depends on the vision.

As to the lazy moron, yes, and those who are criminally lacking in imagination. It does make me wonder what the definition is for a "trained reader's rigorous engagement." Trained as in....an English degree? Being an author oneself? Who decides who's qualified to offer critique?