Something can be symbolic without being a mere stand-in or vessel, which just brings us away from the true mystery and dread, into some boring version of what we already know. So what you say is true, in that the bear is a kind of parallel to the speaker, or imagined as such, but also very different. So if it's a symbol it is - ahem - a polysemous one.
Matthew ZapruderMiroslav Holub seems to expect his readers to act like scientists, who are curious in every direction, take nothing for granted, and are willing to accept any truth, however unexpected.
Matthew ZapruderI guess my poems feel to me a bit like they are doing something in relation to experience, i.e. time.
Matthew ZapruderAll my closest friends came to me through poetry. My wife, too! Other than my family, poetry is the gravitational force of my life.
Matthew ZapruderI am intrigued and even moved by the idea of being right with the reader in the actuality that she or he is reading a poem. So the titles are an acknowledgment of the reality and value of that act in the world.
Matthew ZapruderI think it is our job as poets to refuse the terms that society so often sets for usefulness. That, for instance, is what Dickinson did: she refused to be a wife, a homemaker, a standard member of her community. She knew she had to in order to have the space and time to write her poems. Thank god she said no!
Matthew ZapruderI've always been more than a little mystified by poets who seem to think talking to people as directly as possible is a bad thing. I mean, I don't want to set up a straw man here: I understand that for many poets - and for me, at times - writing truly means writing in a way that is difficult, simply because the poem is trying to grasp for something elusive. So the difficulty of the poem is just unavoidable, and not in any way artificially imposed. So "as possible" is the key part of the phrase above, I suppose.
Matthew Zapruder