One of my first comments here on hubski was a pretty naked expression of my reading process. I'm not sure how effective that comment is... in retrospect, the analysis seems more revealing of my experience as a (certainly flawed) reader with the poem than the actual poem itself, but I think that's the point I want to make -- Have you ever heard of Death of the Author? It's an idea that goes so, the intentions of the author should not influence a reading because you end up limiting possible interpretations of the text, and we can never really know the intentions anyways... All we have is the arrangement of words, and how our brains spark in its processing. And in this sense, we cannot ever reverse engineer writing. We can only express our own experiences with it. Or rather, reading IS reverse engineering but you can't get away from the you. It seems to me that the best way to read is as a practice of mindfulness. Eyes on the text and ears pressed against the self.