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. I do not believe that meter alone defines genre, but it is a central characteristic. Certainly the ancients' did not have clearly demarcated thematic limitations on genre as we often suppose. Roman literature more often than not by modern criteria mixed freely generic categories. For instance, Aeneas does not seem to be motivated by the heroic concept of kleos or the hope that he will be remembered in song.