The responsibility of a poem belongs to the reader, as the reader is the one who makes light of the meanings of the text through their own perspective. We often set ourselves into the poem to create a connection, moving us to an alternate world, created by the writer which we choose to inhabit. The writer is essentially giving the reader the tools as the reader is the one that puts all these ideas together to create a meaning for the text. One may interpret a poem differently from another, making it our responsibility of what we think of the text. We surely can’t say what the writer is trying to depict as there are no straight forwards answers most of the time. Emily Dickinson is able to uphold this concept of leaving the reader responsible for the text beautifully, as she tends to write lyrically and by using the word “I” continuosly. The word “I” doesn’t reflect to herself entirely, the “I” can be someone or something we can choose to be. She essentially makes us pick out the characters of who is who, changing the entire structure of the poem. Another concept Emily Dickinson used was that she never titled her work to her credit, leaving this idea that the reader is simply given text and they become the author. This is why the tool of translation is so important in understanding literary works, as they tend to “bring light” onto the meanings of specific words and analogies in a text when in reality we’re basically creating the poem from the text given to us.

After a poem is written, the writer no longer bears responsibility for the poem. She has cast it out for the world to manipulate at its leisure. Those who bear these responsibilities are the readers, the critics, and the translators as they can transform it. As Howe puts it, once I put my words out there, “possibility has opened.” As a poem reaches the public, with the vast diversity of minds, perspective, and motives.

The reader is responsible for interpreting the verses. Those who become enthralled by the poem may share their own interpretation, proliferating new meanings foreign from the truth. Even if an author attempts to establish a correct interpretation, those who are overly fanatical with their interpretation may choose to disregard the author’s meaning and preach their own, as seen in the numerous fan theories one can find online.

The critic plays quite the different role. He critic judges the quality of the work, deeming it worthy or not of another’s time. The critic is responsible for influencing the opinions of others. Critics’ opinions can carry heavy weight as their words may give the reader a positive or negative preconception of the poem. Critiques can heavily influence the size of the audience the poem reaches. If a poet interjects their opinion on the matter the masses can easily label her as biased and the critic as objective.

Translators play quite the unique role of “reinventing” the words of the poet. Their sole duty is to bring the poem to a new audience. Their responsibility mimics that of the poet, choosing the right words to convey the feel and message of the poem. If a translation is inaccurate in transmitting the message that the original has been replaced with something new, stripping the target audience of the poets’ words and meaning.

All of this is affirmed by Howe in her work. She states that “as soon as the poet puts their words out there it is no longer in their possession” and how”there is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living.”

The poet is responsible for crafting a puzzle, it is the responsibility of everyone else to solve it, judge it, and propagate it.

Dante Novoa

I believe that the poet is responsible for a poem’s power. As an extension to this, I believe writers are responsible for a written work’s power. Recently, S.E. Hinton received backlash after stating that two of the characters in her famous work, The Outsiders, were not homosexual. People accused her of not being considerate of young people in the LGBTQ+ community who identify with these characters they assumed to be gay, to which her response was “Young gay kids can identify with the book without me saying the characters are gay…I said I did not write the characters that way. I apologize for nothing.”

In the case of Emily Dickinson, who hid her poems and never published any of her work with her name on them while she was alive, I don’t think she would appreciate other people trying to dictate what she meant in her writing. Dickinson was known for using a writing style (and life style) that would set her apart from other writers, and, according to Howe’s commentary, she was “emanicpated from all representations of human order” when she locked herself in her childhood home for the majority of her life. The outside world is not equipped to analyze her poetry and accurately depict what it means which causes the poem to lose some of its power.

Howe goes on to say that “My voice formed from my life belongs to nobody else.” According to this, the reader of poetry actually strips the poet of power once the poem is read.

-Sabrina Rodriguez

A poem is like a mysterious lock forged by its writer. Yet it can be unlocked by many if sincere interpretations are provided as keys by the readers of the poem.  Therefore, I believe it is the readers that grant a poem power more than its poet. Poems sometimes are not meant by their writers to be published or shared, but they are often filled with the poets’ feelings at a time. Interpretations, then, can be much more powerful for a reader and its entire audience to comprehend  deeper understandings. For example in Emily Dickinson’s poem 764, the very first line says, “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun “. Knowing that Miss Dickinson spent most of her life within walls of her ancestral house and her poems unpublished in her lifetime, she must often have felt the eagerness to explore the world outside her perimeters when she wrote so many about journeys and adventures. She might have only put down her sentiments at that time, but to us, as readers, our understandings of her poems gives more possibilities to interpret her work.

A poem’s power comes from the reader even more so than the writer. A poet can transcribe a poem, which may just be a form of feeling for them, and it can lead to representing something much greater for an individual, group, or even an entire country. The Poems of Emily Dickson are a series of poems published after her death. She had no control over her poems at that point, leaving the interpretation and translations to be deciphered among those who took it upon themselves to do so. She had no say on if a poem was mistakenly translated. The power is transferred to the reader. Every word is up for interpretation in a poem and sometimes the reader will think of a message in the poem that was never meant to be there. In Emily Dickson’s poem 930, the first line says “The Poets light but Lamps – Themselves – go out – The Wicks they stimulate If vital Light”. A poet only lights the lamp but the ones who spread the message stimulate the meaning behind it are the ones who read them. Emily Dickson hid her poems. Had they not been discovered, there would have been no way for the poems to be transferred all over the world. That may have been her decision, but once they were discovered, the readers took it upon themselves to reproduce and publish the poems so that all may read it. In conclusion, a poem may have the passion and ambition of the writer behind the words, but once it is written, the responsibility shifts to the reader on what they will do with it.

Once a poem is written, one person in particular is not responsible for it. Instead, any reader that comes across the poem is now responsible, which includes the writer itself. As a reader, it is his/her responsibility to analyze the poem and give his/her own insight on it. Individuals all come from diverse backgrounds and have different mentalities. Thus, there is no “correct” interpretation of a poem. Howe mentions this herself in her commentary when she states that, “Emily Dickinson suggests that the language of the heart has quite another grammar” (13). The language of the heart refers to one’s own thoughts, emotions and interpretations. It is referred to as another language because people translate their own thoughts into ideas similar to how people translate languages. Essentially, this is what happens when a writer is establishing a poem or when a reader is interpreting a poem. In both scenarios, these individuals are responsible for their own judgement. Howe clarifies this idea once more by asserting, “My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else” (13). Her ideas were influenced by the events and people in her life and only she is responsible for them. As a result, when it comes to analyzing a poem, the reader has a duty to give his/her intake on it because s/he is responsible for his/her judgement.

    After a poem is written, the poet loses complete control of it and is no longer responsible for the poem that they have written. Instead, responsibility is transferred to the reader. The reader decides what to do with what they read and how to interpret what they read. For example, when Emily Dickinson died, and people were able to read her poems, she lost control of  the way that her poems were interpreted, edited, and published. Her sister, Lavinia, found almost two thousand poems written and stashed away by Emily Dickinson. After reading the poems, Lavinia decided to take the task to edit and organize them for publication. Other authors like Thomas W. Higginson also decided to edit and publish her poems. According to the text “Emily Dickinson”, “Higginson was one of the first to publish volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, editing the work to make it seem as conventional as he could.” Higginson took possession of Emily Dickinson’s poems and translated it based on his own interpretation of it. He also took the liberty “to make it seem as conventional as he could” because he thought that the “world would not appreciate them” if he didn’t try to make them seem conventional. Another example that proves that a writer loses control and responsibility of their poems once they are written, is the following quote by Susan Howe: “What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem.” Meaning that after a poem is written, it is up to the reader whether the poem will be forgotten, erased or recollected and deconstructed. Howe also states, “There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living.” Meaning that the reader can interpret the poem in a way that may not have been intended by the writer. Hence, once a poem is written, responsibility is transferred to the reader, who decides what to do with what they have read and how to interpret the reading.

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.

Poems are expressed through stanzas. Once a poem is written, I believe it could be up to the readers. As humans we all work differently and thats what makes us unique therefore we are able to interpret things in many ways. In Emily Dickinson’s poems, the back story was that some of her poems were not meant to be published or view by others. In her lifetime she was living through the civil war times and she basically wrote these poems for herself. As a reader you are able to see that it’s hard to interpret line by line from her poems and actually figuring out what it means since her poems are mostly to herself. In the reading in the text it says that “As poetry changes itself it changes the poet’s life” I believe once a poem is written, its up to how readers take upon it and translate it the way they want to.

Andrew Zawacki’s translation was an insightful event which gave me an idea of how translation can sometimes change meaning of the original piece. Zawacki presents translation as a form of great art work. His experience on meeting the original French authors and getting the real taste of these poems is amazing. The most significant lesson was for me that no matter how closely he worked with the authors and the poems themselves, translation will never be the same as the original poems. For instance, Zawaki mentioned that the French version of the poems are read really fast however with the English version he was reading it slowly. This gives me an insight that even in reading it out loud has a big difference in tone due to the differences of two languages. Also another great thing I learned since there are not always the exact words available the translators different literary tools to cope with the meaning of the poem in order to keep the meaning as authentic as possible. Although it is not possible to keep the meaning of the poem word by word in all of his poem Zawacki kept the meaning alive as well as its poetic vibe.

Although literature can lose meaning during the process of translation, ultimately, I think that translation of literature beautiful because it opens doors for diversity as people of different languages and cultures can get ideas about each other. This is a great way to learn about the different cultures around the world.

— Farzana