Criticism is not polemic. One does not lean over the text and beat meaning out of it with one critical approach and then another. The purpose of criticism is not to reduce the text to its lowest value and so strip it of any significant meaning. Instead, as Martin Buber argues, the text should be embraced as a living element with transforming powers.
Sense comes when the world of the text contacts our own and together produce an idea.
Critical approaches do offer different vantage points for understanding and appreciating the multiple senses of the text, but they are tools and not art. To learn to think outside the boxes, you must know what the boxes are. Horace, although indebted to the poetry of Catullus, Lucretius, and Vergil among other Roman predecessors and contemporaries, represents the pinnacle of the Roman lyric acheivement. The themes of lyric are also varied and include epic heroism, philosophy, politics, religious ritual, the pains and pleasures of life such as banqueting, singing, lovemaking, old age and mortality. The Horatian Odes incorporate all these themes within four books.