"The Intentional Fallacy"

So in my last post I wrote about Eliot's idea of depersonalization of poetry and how I wasn't sure I agreed with his views. For class we were assigned to read William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley's essay "The Intentional Fallacy". This essay talks about the author's intention and though I found at times it sounded similar to Eliot's ideas, I agreed more with their thoughts towards poetry.

As English majors we all have spent class after class discussing the author's "meaning" in either a poem or a novel or a short essay. We tear it apart until we've come up with every possible symbol. At times this can be frustrating because after spending so much time attempting to understand what the author's intent was we lose the joy of the reading itself. In "The Intentional Fallacy" Wimsatt and Beardsley believe that "in order to judge the poet's performance, we must know what he intended". I completely agree but sometimes it isn't a black and white issue. How are we suppose to know what the author intended? It isn't like every poem or every story is so easy to read. At times I finish reading a piece of writing and I'm lost, confused, and completely unsure of what I was suppose to understand from it. In Wimsatt and Beardsley's opinion if this is the case then the poet did not succeed: "If the poet succeeded in doing it, then the poem itself shows what he was trying to do. And if the poet did not succeed, then the poem is not adequate evidence, and the critic must go outside the poem--for evidence of an intention that did not become effective in the poem." My question is how do we go about "going outside the poem"? And is that even our job or should the poet step it up and try to "succeed" in his poetry?

I appreciated that Wimsatt and Beardsley allowed room for personal expression in poetry and art. After reading Eliot I wasn't sure if I was the only one who believed this was important. But they write "the meaning of a poem may certainly be a personal one, in the sense that a poem expresses a personality or state of a soul rather than a physical object like an apple." So there is hope for the writer who uses verse and words to express their feelings and release themselves.

I'm still left with so many questions regarding these ideas. Is personal expression good in writing? Should the reader have to go outside the poem to understand or is it the poet's job to write a poem that is good and rich with intent and meaning? As English majors do we always need to be trying to find the hidden meaning and purpose of a piece of literature or is it ok to just read for pure pleasure sometimes? Why do we feel the need to always be searching for more in a text rather then allowing the text to speak for itself?