on symbols

I had a lightbulb moment while reading Frye's chapter on symbols. It happened on pages 95-96. We have said in class several times how art imitates life. Frye goes a step further and says it also imitates other art; that a poem is not just imitating nature, it is also imitating other poems. I found this interesting because I think you could tie this in to Frye's archetypal chart and how he thinks everything is cyclical and returns back to where it started. The idea that poems imitate other earlier poems suggests a cyclical pattern as well because the same ideas, emotions, and stories would continually be told. Knowing that poems are connected makes us look at them as a whole (poetry), rather than as individual units (a poem). This is why we can use blanket words like "poetry" adn "literature", because it is all interconnected. sort of a bunch of trees make a forest type of thing. I dunno, just found that kind of interesting