The Symbolos

[therabbitisme]

The Symbolos are entities
That tell the truth in riddles
Whether in great complexities
Or tunes upon a fiddle      .................. so Symbolos' play the fiddle?  Odd choice.

One sat upon a too-small throne
His visage like a fractal
He speaks his mind with poetry
In meter ever-dactyl:    ............... waaaaaaay too far of a reach for this rhyme

"Reading this poem in a poem is a soul
Whose vision of me is apart and not whole
And likewise, whose knowledge of words is not such
To see, in this poem in a poem, very much"    ....... why the " " marks?  Is this a poem within a poem?  So now we're aware that we're in a poem. 

His words sent echoes through the room
Which found itself in open air
And though it felt just like a tomb
The walls of which just were not there  .....  liked that stanza.

And so all things are tied apart
A riddle like a work of art
And in Symbolic brush we find
The strokes that make a thinking mind    .... Symbolic,  Symbolos, ????  Why did you capitalize Symbolic?

Needs a little more definition.  Not certain what you're trying to say.  Some nice parts.  The feel was good but I'm not sure where I went.

Jack

Hi, thanks for the comments! I totally get your comments that it lacks context; it is supposed to fit into a larger "lore" with more context, but my goal is for it to stand on its own. Basically this all fits into the theories and literature of Douglas Hofstadter, and it makes more sense with some knowledge of his writing, but it will be my responsibility to provide that context independently. The "Symbolos" are supposed to be abstract entities that hold great wisdom, but convey it only through analogies, art, symbols, etc. The first stanza stands to establish that, though I agree it could use some pretext. They "tell the truth in riddles", where the "fiddle" refers to the metaphorical and symbolic content of music (as one example of metaphorical communication).

I do not quite agree that "meter ever-dactyl" is a stretch, because it actually refers to the "quirk" of the particular character. I'm may be my fault that this didn't come through, but the stanza in quotations is a poem-in-a-poem, in dactyl meter, spoken by the entity. This whole idea is meant to be reflective of Hofstadter's idea of a Strange Loop (just trust me that someone familiar with his work would see that immediately), in that the poem-about-a-poem serves as a metaphor for metaphors. Hence, due to the apparent triteness of the analogy, you did not "see in this poem in a poem very much". I know it sounds like a cop-out, but the internal poem was intended as a discussion of trite metaphors in the form of a trite metaphor, where the nestedness of the poem serves as a foil to the meta-ness of the meta-metaphor (I'm being sarcastically trite at this point).

The capitalization of "Symbolic" is another artifact of the style of Carroll and Hofstadter, and serves to bring attention to a dense metaphor. Here, the metaphor refers to the neural-symbolic theory of mind, where "Symbolic brush" is a double-entendre between brush (a paint brush that creates symbolism and draws metaphors/analogies) and brush (like the brush of tree/bushes, referring to the density of information that our minds must consume to find symbolic meaning). This double-metaphor is paralleled in the final line, where (paint) brush relates to stroke (as in brush stroke "connecting" symbols to make a thinking mind) and "stroke" referring to the physicality of the mind by proxy of a "stroke" (the medical affliction where the flaws of the brain's construction cause its collapse).

Thanks again for your comments. This is very much an experimental poem in a domain which I intend to explore more deeply. While my explanations my make it seem like the poem is opaque and unanalyzable without context, I have shown it to others who come closer to getting the point on first read. You seem to have basically gotten all of the references, and perhaps the problem was having no way to be confident in the apparent metaphors sense they are dense and uncontextualized. I'll take your honest opinions to heart!