Using figurative language: similes and metaphors (11.30.17)

Making similes work in your poems

A simile is an equation (“this” = “that”) that uses “like” or “as”: O, my love is like a red, red rose.  Just as in mathematics, in poetry, the “equation” or = sign, states a comparison between two things that, on the surface, or in our normal experience, might seem unrelated.  Therefore, “love = rose.”  But in simile, the difference is always stressed, that is, expressed as obvious: love is SIMILAR TO a rose (but not a rose).

Depending on how similar or dissimilar the items in a simile are, the equation delivers more or less “force” or surprise when you encounter it.  Sometimes that surprise can be comical or nonsensical, as in examples 1 and 2 below; slightly bizarre, as in example 5; or lyrical (example 6); or non-visual (8, 9); or emotive (6, 10).  Sometimes, a simile can be rendered self-consciously, or, put a better way, metatextually, where it expresses not only an image, but a (literary) convention, as in example 11.

Similes can link together abstract and concrete items.  In fact, this is exactly what poets sometimes try to do when they wish to create arresting and memorable images with similes.  Emily Dickinson often made striking images by linking abstract and concrete words, as in examples 12 and 13.

Examples

1. A pencil is like a pantsuit
2. A corncob is like a deck of cards, but a deck of cards is like a cake
3. Bill is like a bull with a bell and a ball of gummy bears
4. My dog is as big as a mouse and as small as a house
5. My dog has fleas as loud as a rock band
6. What was so blue like evenings in the fall or black like a bible
7. The tailor rolling open his fabrics like a field marshal his plans
8. My paper rustles, noisy as crows
9. Rustling leaves—like the shuffling of cards
10. The man under the bed . . . the man who is silent as dustballs riding the darkness
11. My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
12. Over and over, like a Tune—The Recollection plays
13.  . . .

           The difference between Despair

           And Fear—is like the One 

           Between the instant of a Wreck

           And when the Wreck has been . . .

Figurative language project: writing similes

Before we meet again next week, spend some time in your poetry journal making similes of as many types as you can think of: concrete to concrete, abstract to concrete, (abstract to abstract?), nonsensical, emotive, bizarre.  Make some of your similes non-visual (e.g., describing sounds, smells, textures, temperatures, tastes).

1.      Write at least 10 similes merely as similes, that is, using “like” or “as”

2.      Write one poem of four lines or more that begins with a simile

3.      Be prepared to share your experienced coming up with the similes

Making metaphor work in your poems

Like simile, metaphor is an equation with two or more elements on either side of an = sign, only without the helpful traffic signs of “like” or “as.”  Some metaphors relate two items that normally would appear to be unrelated (like fox and sun in the third example below).  Relations between or among normally unrelated items can be rendered in more or less conventional and “appropriate” settings (the fox and the sun are linked within the larger conventional setting of nature—the brook).  In other instances, metaphor is rendered more subtly and without conventional context, as in examples 1 and 8 below (rain = head/human being, but in what context? An arresting image!).

Metaphor also turns on the associations that we have with words (and therefore depends on cultural conventions that we share and understand more or less).  So, when a metaphor functions like an implied equation (“this” = “that”) between unlike items and uses certain shared understandings to make the equation work, it is a deeper, more complex kind of metaphor.  Examples 1 and 4 below are good examples.

Examples 

1. A bohemia of sluggishness
2. Sandbags gorged with the land
3. The fox that runs behind the brook each evening is the setting sun
4. He went into himself where shame makes its poor home
5. Draco climbs the neighborhood pines and is gone
6. Peabody Coal & Anthracite sleeps on the Illinois side this morning
7. The fence, a scar along the exquisite thigh of this valley
8. Even the rain was throwing back its head

Figurative language project: identifying metaphors

For next week, in addition to any other poetry writing you do, look for examples of metaphoric language in your reading: among the books of poetry you have in your own library, in the newspaper, on your cereal box, in advertisements, even in emails that you send or receive during the week.

1. Write down in your poetry journal at least 10 examples of metaphoric language
2. For each metaphor, reduce the figure to its most basic equation (“this” = “that”)
3. Be prepared to share your findings