01-09-2016, 05:35 AM
Actually I like the way the poem focuses very closely on the man's hands, at that point rolling and feeling the cigarette. I've read it a few times now, and I feel the edit has smoothed the poem out for me at least. Now I'm seeing a clash of cultures, old man vs young man, each in their 'haze' and not really communicating at all, although words are exchanged. O like the play with sounds, very Beat, and the play with sexuality through Ginsberg's somewhat effeminate gestures, and the phallic cigarette.
I like the addition of time and place at the start - gave me a context for the man on the bench.
Does the second segment add anything, really? For me the poem ended with 'He was suckled on it. ' That left me with an image of the impossibility of communication between two people so wrapped up in their inner worlds that the outer world, in which they meet, doesn't really exist for them.
I figure a guy that old, living tough, won't last a long time, and I resist the suggestion that it was this encounter that made him take his life.
But I'll read it some more. Just wanted to let you know I'd been by.
I like the addition of time and place at the start - gave me a context for the man on the bench.
Does the second segment add anything, really? For me the poem ended with 'He was suckled on it. ' That left me with an image of the impossibility of communication between two people so wrapped up in their inner worlds that the outer world, in which they meet, doesn't really exist for them.
I figure a guy that old, living tough, won't last a long time, and I resist the suggestion that it was this encounter that made him take his life.
But I'll read it some more. Just wanted to let you know I'd been by.