“To analyze a poem, [I.A.] Richards instructed readers, they must pay much closer attention to the actual words of the poem and how they worked; no more chasing after the phantoms of truth and beauty, no more adventures of the soul amidst masterpieces, no more looking at poetry as the expression of an age or of the personal life of the poet or as a statement of truth embellished by all sorts of poetic devices. In Richards's view, a poem is simply a supreme form of human communication. A reader analyzes a poem to see how it is able to achieve its effects — that is, to communicate an experience. English studies are themselves nothing but a study of the process of communication.”
Philip Marchand