Keesey, Ch 5 (Introduction) -- Jerz EL312 (Literary Criticism)
"A poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever written. We read A the better to read B (we have to start somewhere; we may get very little out of A). We read B the better to read C, C the better to read D, D the better to go back and get something out of A. Progress is not aim, but circulation. The thing is to get among the poems where tehy hold each other apart in their places as the stars do" (Selected Prose, New York, 1966, pp. 96-97).