The preceding discussion may point up the need to eliminate a widespread semantic confusion, the tendency to use the words poem and text interchangeably. Teachers tell students to "read the poem"; contemporary critics make no distinction between "the poem itself," "the work itself," and "the text itself." This reflects a failure to distinguish between the linguistic symbols (the sounded words, the written or printed marks on the page) and what a listener or reader makes of them. Perhaps it is Utopian to hope to change such entrenched confusions in literary or critical usage, but at least in a consideration of the reading process such as the present one, there will be an effort to maintain a semantic