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The aim of this essay is to examine poetry not as a natural result of expression-the garb of thought- but rather as an integral part of a communicative process. The poetic communication requires the interaction of two participants, usually called an author and a reader. Poetry is an interactive mediation even if the reader does not know the author. As long as authors and readers collaborate in their complementary and reciprocal tasks of composing and comprehending, as long as authors write on the premises of readers and readers read on the premises of writers, the result is coherent communication. The poetic text transmits different information to different readers in proportion to each one's comprehension. It behaves as a kind of living organism which has a feedback channel to the reader and thereby instructs him. Also within the text, communication involves a fictional speaker transmitting a poetic message to a fictional listener. Therefore the thoroughgoing analysis of this communication is important and essential for understanding poetry. From this angle every poem can be defined as "the imitation or representation of an utterance," "quasi-quoted discourse," "speech within speech," and "pseudo-dialogues." Thus the poem represents not merely the words of an utterance, but a total act of speech. We respond not only to what the speaker is saying but to how he is saying and, thereby, to what is making him say it: his intentions, emotions, motives and dramatic situation. The speaker's counterpart, the listener is also important because the speaker's attitude, tone, and topic depend on the implied social relationship of the speaker to his listener.