Invented Symbol
- Symbol created out of a thing, action, or event that has no previously agreed-upon symbolic significance
- Can be action, thing, idea, etc.
- "After a Death" by Roo Borson (p. 860)
Symbols in Poetry
Traditional Symbol
You now have more keys to unlock the images and wonders of poetry
- Symbols with built-in significance because of past usage in literature or tradition
- Stories a culture develops to explain itself and its beliefs, so these symbols have agreed-upon significance/meaning
- More easily recognizable
- Ex: Birds - flight, freedom, soaring beyond rationality or mortality, imagination, pure and ideal singers of songs
- May be used for traditional meaning or revised to create new meaning and effect
The End
- Something that stands for something else
- Symbols in poetry have range of reference beyond their literal significance, or denotation
- How symbols are interpreted may be based on person's background, but context of poem will help
- A poem itself can be wholly symbolic
Personification
- Treating an abstraction (death, justice, beauty, etc.) as if it were a person
- Creates emotional responses that could be spooky, depressing, humorous, etc.
Visual Imagery and Symbols in Poetry
Allusion
- Brief reference to a fictitious or actual person, place, or thing and, usually, to the stories or myth surrounding it
- Used to suggest complex images, feelings, and ideas relying on shared literary and cultural knowledge
- Sometimes need to look up the reference, but most important first step is to recognize it
- "My Love for You Is So Embarrassingly" by Todd Boss (p. 840)
Metaphor
Simile and Analogy
- Describing something as if it were something else
- Poets compare ideas foreign to us to familiar things for us to visualize and understand
- Extended metaphor: single metaphor that extends over a section of a poem
- Controlling metaphor: single metaphor that extends over the whole poem
- "Marks" by Linda Pastan (p. 838)
- Simile: explicit comparisons ("like a rose" and "as cold as winter")
- Analogy: simile that is more elaborate and developed comparison that governs a whole poem
Visual Imagery
- Poems depend on concrete and specific words that create images in our minds - images we can ground ourselves in
- Physical senses
- Much of interpreting poetry lies in images poems create
Language of Poetry
- Language of poetry is often visual and pictorial.
- Languages of description vary
- Precision and its opposite
- Figurative language, or figures of speech
Figurative Language in Poetry
- Metaphor
- Personification
- Simile and Analogy
- Allusion
- All types aim to clarify experience, speaker's perspective, tone, theme, etc.
- Invite us to feel certain ways based on images provided