The poems: “The Geese,” “The Purse-Seine,” “Wild Geese,” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” contain symbolism. Each symbol differs in each poem, signifying different ideas. However, they all share a certain bond, namely the use of animals. The poems deal with animals which explain, not directly but indirectly, a crucial point of the poem. The use of animals in the poems of Jorie Graham, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Oliver and Walt Whitman has a symbolic connection with human affairs. Poets do not faithfully consider animals as animals. They relate them more to humans, rather than to what they physically are, animals. For example, in Walt Whitman's poem, "A Noiseless Patient Spider", Whitman compares the spider's actions to those of humans. The lines of both stanzas correspond to each other. The second line, which explains the spider, states, “I marked where on a little promontory it stood alone” (Whitman 723). It corresponds to line seven, which is “surrounded, detached, in boundless oceans of space” (Whitman 723). Line seven talks about a human being. As seen, these lines talk about loneliness. He continues to talk about the feeling of desolation that both the spider and the human feel. So the spider is, indirectly, actually a human being. The theme of “A Noiseless Patient Spider” “is the search, or exploration, for meaning and knowledge in the vastness of the universe” (Cummings). He clarifies this idea through the symbolization of a spider and a human. It describes the actions of the spider and connects them to the behavior of a human to convey its idea. Also use repetition. Line four says, “he threw filament, filament, filament out of himself” (Whitman 723). The filament is clinched. That's what spiders do when they're in the bathroom... in the middle of paper... while reading and writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008. 709. PrintJeffers, Robinson. "The Purse Seine." Literature An introduction to reading and writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008.713. PrintOliver, Mary. “Wild geese”. Literature An introduction to reading and writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008.721. PrintPratt, William. Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996. PrintVendler, Helen. The given and the fact: strategies of poetic redefinition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. PrintWhitman, Walt. "A silent patient spider." Literature An introduction to reading and writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008. 723. Print