Challenges the idea in the critical and educational thinking about literature that poetry is an experience that does not need analysis. (RB)

Describes seven stages in the poet's life--three periods of great creativity in childhood, early middle age, and ripe maturity and four transitional periods marked by confusion and depression. (MM)

Argues that teaching literature is interpreting literature and that, consequently, the position that literature should only be experienced" is unrealistic in any instructional setting. (RD)