Reading poetry

Every poem is personal; every poet feels like they belong to you and no-one else. I know very little about famous poets' lives; have read very few biographies or even searched Wikipedia for many of them. But it doesn't matter. The poem is more important than the poet (numerous quotes could be inserted here). Reading something like Hart Crane's Voyages, for example.. "permit me voyage, love, into your hands", his last, major poem The Broken Tower, I don't have to think about Crane's love of his life, a sailor for whom the sex was casual, or his one heterosexual love Peggy, on the boat with him when he died. This aspect of the poem (it's background, conception and personal context for the poet) is interesting, sometimes useful even, if you want to know how the poem was intended to be read. But if you are just reading from your personal situation, which I would argue any emotional reading would be, you take the words and interpret them in the light of your own experience, and if they're good, they might alter how you see aspects of your own life or people in it.