09-12-2012, 12:28 AM
I agree with you from your point of view, having read it in that way. I'm not trying to defend the poem as much as I'm trying to come to terms with other people's experience of it. That's the whole point really. I see how the last lines can be seen to come out of nowhere, and seem out of character with what's heard from the speaker up to then.
There was a hope that is gone. A hope that lived with fantastical visions and talking wounds in a schizophrenic ecstasy that he's trying to repress and not talk about. I'm trying to express his thought processes. If I failed, that was part of the risk. There's no fighting angels:
I can't expect people to see the schizophrenic logic of the last lines, that's the main contradiction. But that's the feat I've been trying, and failing, to accomplish: the angels aren't angels yet, not believed in angels or metaphysical angels or abstract angels, but something's throwing a fit that will later be seen as angels or daimons, maybe I could have said "A fit for survival among future angels [or simply, the angel]"; 'angel' or 'daimon', both have unfortunate connotations. The mammal is obvious and trite, as you say. But something is happening to an animal that can't even know the concept of "happening" or "something". 'Word' can be a metaphor. The speaker can know things though. As far as he knows, all his shared experiences aren't really shared.
I've a "primitive" use of poetry. Like "philosophy" in the old, magical ways.
There was a hope that is gone. A hope that lived with fantastical visions and talking wounds in a schizophrenic ecstasy that he's trying to repress and not talk about. I'm trying to express his thought processes. If I failed, that was part of the risk. There's no fighting angels:
I can't expect people to see the schizophrenic logic of the last lines, that's the main contradiction. But that's the feat I've been trying, and failing, to accomplish: the angels aren't angels yet, not believed in angels or metaphysical angels or abstract angels, but something's throwing a fit that will later be seen as angels or daimons, maybe I could have said "A fit for survival among future angels [or simply, the angel]"; 'angel' or 'daimon', both have unfortunate connotations. The mammal is obvious and trite, as you say. But something is happening to an animal that can't even know the concept of "happening" or "something". 'Word' can be a metaphor. The speaker can know things though. As far as he knows, all his shared experiences aren't really shared.
I've a "primitive" use of poetry. Like "philosophy" in the old, magical ways.