Showing posts with label tree. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tree. Show all posts

labor as symbol

A favorite device among literary people is to regard nature as a storehouse of symbols. The person who does this does not experience the tree or the pelican as a tree or a pelican, but forces it to labor right away as a symbol.

—Robert Bly, “The old postion,” News of the Universe (Sierra Club Books, 1980)