Bridges to Meaning

What Metaphors of a Magnifico said to me is the author has a meaning that seems to be escaping him so he leaves it to us as readers to establish our own meaning and figure out exactly “of what was he thinking?” The author also writes that “the meaning escapes” but as the author the meaning escapes him. As the chapter on Reading indicates, we as readers are entitled to our own analysis and opinions, so even though the meaning may have escaped the writer, we as readers can draw our own meaning on the poem. For example, this poem could be a metaphor for war or a metaphor for discourse. The phrase “twenty men crossing a bridge into a village” sure sounds like an invasion to me, but the following passages which ask if “twenty men are crossing twenty bridges” and so on sounds more like this might be a poem about discourse. One man could have the knowledge and experience of other men and perhaps he is going to go to the town and speak about those experiences with those inside this town. That is one interpretation of this poem, and I, as the reader, am allowed to it, but it does not make it fact. It is just one interpretation. That is the right of all readers.
When we get down the anatomy of the poem, such as the ellipsis and the repetition, I feel it was the author’s way of placing meaning in the poem without actually writing it. When he writes “the meaning escapes” and then ends two lines with ellipsis then we are left with an unfinished through and the fragmentary image that is left in my mind is that this is a memory for the writer and he is trying to remember it long enough to write a poem about it. However, he is having difficulty. This supports the earlier theory that maybe this is a metaphor poem about war, because if it was a traumatic experience for the writer then his memory in all likelihood could be a bit distorted or missing, perhaps that was the meaning that the writer tried to leave with this poem, but once it leaves the writer’s hands it enters that of the readers and there are as many interpretations in the world as there are people. “Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges or one man crossing a single bridge?”