Though this essay will describe both the real and imagined readers of these poetries, it is most concerned with delineating how different his-torical and critical moments, specifically the Black Arts movement and post-structuralism, shape poets' notions of their audiences and determine how that work is received and understood. 1 Because most reader-response theorists focus on novels and narrative, the shifting conventions within different poetry communities do not often figure into their examination of individual reader's interpretive practices. Far fewer studies have focused on the subjectivities of actual audiences for recent poetry, though reader-response critics and reception theorists have extensively discussed how individual readers interpret novels old and new.
Since the 1970s, many critics of contemporary American poetry have focused on the issue of subjectivity, particularly the 'I' or speaker in poetry and its political implications.
