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This essay examines the differences between William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson in their understanding of the relationship between the poet and his readers. Whereas Wordsworth’s poetics is mainly concerned about how to maximize the possibility of sympathetic communication between the poet and the readers, Emerson’s poetics focuses primarily on the poet’s liberation from the imprisonment of the senses and conventions. This difference in their focus arises from their differing definitions of the self. Although Wordsworth’s intense interrogation of different aspects of his own consciousness evinces his awareness of the complicated structure and texture of what constitutes the self, he still thinks within the frame of the eighteenth-century assumption about the uniformity of human nature. On the other hand, vehemently opposed to any attempt to conform to accustomed values and patterns of living, Emerson rejects the eighteenth-century view that posits the common and uniform nature of human beings. For Emerson, nature is constantly in flux, and when one stops endeavoring to become one’s true self, one is cut off from the circuit of power one can tap into to be actualized. Emerson believes the poet’s liberation ultimately extends to his readers’ liberation, which is why he is relatively uninterested in the possibility of communication between the poet and the readers.