No one is really “responsible” for a poem once it’s written. I don’t think that neither the writer, nor the reader or the publisher carries that burden of responsibility. The minute you decide to put down your voices into words, what you must know is; it’s no longer only yours. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean for it to go out there in the world for everyone to see it, but once you are gone, it’s really up to the people who possess your writings whether to publish it or not. And once it’s out there, now it’s up to the readers how they interpret these poems and if they want to deconstruct and re write it or just let it fade and forget it.

Emily Dickinson was someone who “chose for some reason to shut herself inside her childhood family constellation” despite how great her poems were. She hid herself in the shadows, no one knew what she looked like, or even know that it was her who wrote those amazing poems in her lifetime. Just like herself, she wanted her poems to stay hidden or burned down to ashes after her death, but here we are, reading her beautiful yet sophisticated works.

In Howe’s commentary, he states that the voices formed from his life belongs to no one else, unless it’s put into words than it’s no longer in his possession. Howe ends his commentary with an interesting statement, “The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem.” It’s clear that we are not only not responsible for our poems once it’s written, but the society has the power to either forget or deconstruct our writings and maybe change the actual idea or meaning of the poem.