12-09-2013, 04:33 PM
Thankyou everyone for your thoughts! I've been away from home lately hence mostly without internet and thus apologize for the delayed response.
To be honest, I have the feeling we're trying too hard to interpret this poem. It is neither a narrative nor a riddle, but an associative thought process. There is, on the one hand, the idea of a 'guardian angel', and then there is the more ferocious biblical idea. The cigarette seemed to me a symbol of this disjunction in language because it offers immediately the promise of pleasure, but in the long run leads to various forms of decay. Here I was thinking more of wrinkled skin, though cancer would be another possible extremity.
That being said, I see that there is a problem with the pronouns and some of the imagery, and I am much obliged to crow for pointing this out.
Cheers! And I will try to get that posted soon.
To be honest, I have the feeling we're trying too hard to interpret this poem. It is neither a narrative nor a riddle, but an associative thought process. There is, on the one hand, the idea of a 'guardian angel', and then there is the more ferocious biblical idea. The cigarette seemed to me a symbol of this disjunction in language because it offers immediately the promise of pleasure, but in the long run leads to various forms of decay. Here I was thinking more of wrinkled skin, though cancer would be another possible extremity.
That being said, I see that there is a problem with the pronouns and some of the imagery, and I am much obliged to crow for pointing this out.
Cheers! And I will try to get that posted soon.