Jan:
It's a good question: How much should our knowledge of the writer's circumstances influence our appreciation of the poem? My vote is for lots and lots. My purpose in reading poetry is not to get a glimpse of platonic verities (although I guess it's nice if that happens), but rather to get closer to another human being -- and "another human being" can be the writer, of course, or another reader, or even another version of myself. If the biographical details of that other person's life help me get closer, so much the better.
Of course there's a balancing act. My wife and I have boxes of our childrens' childhood art; we can't bear to part with it, we love it, but we know that no museum wants it. We're fully aware of it's artistic limitations. Same thing with poetry: I may know so much about your situation that I respond strongly to a poem even while being aware of its artistic limitations. Maybe one way to gauge artistic success is to consider how little of the artist's life we need to know in order to connect with her or his work -- Shakespeare being perhaps the foremost example...
RPW
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