Miss Adair's Poetry Special
Symbolism
Sometimes, when we write, we write about things that people can relate to:
Things that are literal, tangible, safe
-and with which we are familiar.
But...
What we really mean when we write about these things is something quite different all together.
This thing that we've written about is a symbol. It stands in place of something we dare not mention.
Painting uses symbolism as well. Visually, this is a painting of a woman in a flower. If I were to tell you that either the woman or the flower symbolized somwething else, what would you guess that it symbolized?
We try to assign meaning to symbols used in poetry all the time. There's no way to guarantee that our inferenes are correct! We can only imagine.
