Why is it just the handicaps of being a woman novelist that are being focused on.

This almost seems as one sided as saying daughters are meant to be sold at one point or another.

Sounds like Reader Response.

My thoughts exactly.

Makes sense, though. There was life before any of us had a conscious, therefore that is what we're influenced by.

Even Karl Marx himself was influenced by his history and those around him when it came to his writing.

We have gone from meaning found in the text to meaning found in the reader, so I can only assume this is foreshadowing to the fact that we are about to find meaning in the author.

Which is why it's impossible to read text completely 'objectively'. Past experiences and emotions are going to get thrown in there and effect how one perceives a piece of writing and what he or she takes away from it.

I find myself doing this a lot, especially when the text is difficult to understand. Mostly because, even after reading through it multiple times, the beginning always seems to stick in my head better than the ending.

I feel like this is how you're supposed to start out when reading something new. I always reread and reread and reread things and each time I come across points I had completely overlooked the first time. If you're only reading through once and assuming you got all there is to get, you're probably cutting yourself short.

Once the poem, or any piece of art for that matter, is put out into the world the poet's "intention" becomes sort of irrelevant. The art is then open for critics and people to judge and perceive for their own. These judgments are also going to vary from person to person because everyone is viewing the poem with different opinions, mindsets, and backgrounds that influence their perception.

I feel like it's very important to introduce young people to poetry. One of the only things I can remember from middle school was how enthusiastic my eighth grade English teacher was to start the poetry unit with our class. Prior to this, I had never written or gone out of my way to read poetry at all. Many kids, when asked, described poetry as Doctor Seuss or romantic rantings. By the end of the year, though, she had each of us doing exactly what this section talks about, finding our inner voice and creating poems that we were passionate about. This year opened a whole new door for me, personally, as I've never looked at poetry the same again. I always try to go in with the same enthusiasm my teacher had when she first introduced me to it.

I actually really like the way this is written. Basically, what I'm taking away from this, is that there's no one single way of reading the poem. Anybody who reads it is going to be looking at it from their perspective, which changes between each person based on the experiences they've had in life.