The idea that a poem presupposes a reader actively involved with a text is particularly shocking to those seeking to emphasize the objectivity of their interpretations. Afraid that recognition of the importance of the reader will lead to an irresponsible impressionism, critical theorists such as Wellek and Warren have tended to talk about "the poem itself," "the concrete work of art," or even the ideal and unattainable "real" poem. Yet all that they can point to is an interpretation that has been arrived at by a reader in response to a given text. We cannot simply look at the text and predict the poem. The text is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the poem. For this, a reader or readers with particular cultural and individual attributes must be postulated. The author, at the time of its creation, is the first reader. At a later time, even the author himself has a different relationship with the text; there are many stories about this. So it is with a potentially infinite series of other readers of the text. We may postulate a contemporary of the author with similar education and literary and life experience; a contemporary of the author with different background and experience; other individual readers in
specific places and times and at a particular point in their lives, bringing to bear on the text specific linguistic, literary, and social experience.