Paradoxes and Oxymorons | Stanza 2 Summary
The first line is silly and sentimental if readers think of poems as inanimate objects, which cannot feel or desire. More likely, Ashbery is poking fun at the idea of sentimentality. However, it also speaks, again, to the idea of meaning and comprehension, a reader’s own struggle to “possess” language, and a lover’s desire to possess another. The speaker refers back to his own statement in the first stanza when asking, “What’s a plain level?” Such self-interviewing draws readers deeper into the poem, forcing them to pay closer attention to their own thinking processes. The...
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