Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"The Intentional Fallacy"
Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. It is only because an artifact works that we infer the intention of an artificer. "A poem should not mean but be." A poem can be only through its meaning—since its medium is words—yet it is, simply is, in the sense that we have no excuse for inquiring what part is intended or meant. Poetry is a feat of style by which a complex of meaning is handled all at once. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and "bugs" from machinery.
How is a poem like a pudding? As much as this sounds like a riddle from Lewis Carroll's cutting room floor, we promise that Wimsatt and Beardsley are going somewhere with this one. Both puddings and poems are made by someone, and for some purpose.
If you ate a pudding and you couldn't figure out what flavor it was, then the pudding was probably a failure. You wouldn't track down the chef and ask them what they were going for, and then slap your forehead and sigh, "Oh, of course. Silly me: This was supposed to be a pudding that didn't taste like a pudding."
Ya see? If you read a poem and can't figure out what it means, then the poem is a failure. And readers shouldn't have to consult a Ouija board to figure out what the dead author was trying to say with that failure. Even if the author is still alive, we shouldn't have to write her a letter to figure what the heck is happening in the poem.
As W&B put it, "Critical inquiries, unlike bets, are not settled in this way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle." In other words, critics should be able to figure out the poem's meaning from the poem.
Granted, we might have to stare at the poem for a while and have some deep thoughts about it. But to get the poem, all we need is its language—and our wits.
To sum up: it's the poem, not the author, that means anything at all.
We'd like to stress the fact that this is a truly radical passage in literary theory. It puts pressure on the text, and on us in reading the text. The text needs to work it, and we need to figure out how the text's cogs are a-turning.