Just because English teachers and critics want to assign more meaning to his writing than the author ever intended, that does not, in fact, change the authors original meaning. It just makes those english teachers and critics over analytical asshats.

But more to the point, the author to many critics doesn’t know what he meant. More importantly the author doesn’t know the impact of their words.

Personally, I think any interpretation is correct as long as it’s not the literalist’s point of view.

I like this graph a lot, but I think most people should realize that what the author meant doesn’t mean squat. If he/she couldn’t convey it clearly enough, it’s a bad poem.

There’s a story on MLIA where the author of a book came to talk at a school and one of the teachers that was obsessed with his book kept telling the students about the hidden meanings and symbolism and what not. The teacher asked the guy during the interview portion about how X symbolized Y and how he thought that up and the Author just goes, “Umm… what are you talking about?”