What is a Poem Good For?

Poems can help people take abstract concepts and transfer them into tangible ideas. It can help us achieve a better understanding of emotions that are harder to define. It can help someone realize that there are other humans experiencing the same kinds of emotions as them, or give someone a deeper understanding of the experience of someone from a different background. A poem can be good for entertainment and being pleasing to the ear. A poem can be about a heavy subject matter and be used to recreate a difficult emotion or event so that it can be experienced safely.

The hardest part of writing a symbolist poem was conveying the meaning of it without explicitly saying what the meaning was. Instead of explaining what the emotion was in literal terms, I had to use metaphor and simile to compare and contrast the emotion with more tangible experiences. For example, if I just stated that I was anxious and my hands were shaking, it wouldn't be as relatable. However, if I compare my shaking hands to a fish escaped from its bowl, immediately the reader gets a sense of imagery and urgency.

I think the poem I wrote was fine, but probably a bit too long. I was trying to convey the abstract feeling of shame, and every stanza was a way of exploring how I could put it into words. I'm also wondering if my use of allusion was unclear. I was trying to allude to the painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper in stanza 5 but it's less of a well-known allegory.

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