The first three lines of "Address to the Angels" set the scene in which the speaker envisions the events of the poem. As with many poems, the real action takes place within the mind of the narrator while he or she is physically somewhere else. Here, the speaker describes being in an airplane, "Taking off at sunset," when the ascension of the plane makes the sun appear to be pulled up with it and "pin[ned] . . . over the rim" of the earth.
In these lines, Kumin offers a contradiction to the metaphor proposed in the first three lines. This time, the speaker questions whether the airplane, instead of pulling up the sun, seems more to "push down" the horizon as one may use a nail file to.....
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