The Allowance Of Fluidity

So something that I'm still working on in relation to the readings is how the authors imagine "poetry" (or more generally art) and therefore where they see these artistic manifestos, philosophies, and various pieces of praxis as applicable. It seems like a lot of them are dealing mainly with what we would more generally call a poem, but the theories in the poems or the theories about poetry seem to encourage a more universal reading. Do you all think that is accurate? If they texts are meant to be more grandly applied what would that mean to you all in terms of understanding or the ways in which you would be critical of them?