CHAPTER SIX

Figurative Language

“Metaphors want to live.” - Kay Ryan

A poet is not a court reporter. What is in a transcript is fact, perception of fact, or deception. What’s left out of a transcript is doubt, associations, and musings, what’s imagined. As a species, we’ve long preferred musings or stories and songs over fact, manuals and receipts. When gathered around a fire, we tell stories and sing songs, we don’t read ledgers. We are a story telling species.

A poet is not a court reporter. In a deposition, the only risk is not telling the truth as experienced. In a poem, the only risk is telling the truth as is.

As we live, we encounter hard knocks and legitimate big feelings about those hard and important things, yet we are not all poets. Why?

Sometimes a metaphor is a more real experience than the testimony. Why?

Recall Perine’s classic definition of poetry, “a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language.” If the one tool we have to do this is language, how can we say things more intensely than ordinary language? Poetry’s main vehicle for this is figurative language, which is where the playfulness, risk, and vulnerability of poetry goes beyond ordinary language.

There are many more comprehensive resources on figurative language than what we will cover here, where we are introducing these concepts. Poets.org is, according to their website: “produced by the Academy of American Poets, a nonprofit charitable organization.The site was launched in 1996, becoming the first online resource for poems, poets' biographies, essays about poetry, and materials for K-12 teachers.” You can read more about Poets.org and the Academy of American Poets (founded in 1934 by twenty-three year old Marie Bullock) at their website. They have a comprehensive list of poetic terms, forms, techniques, literary schools and movements, and figurative devices. What’s great about this free online resource is that they link to longer pages including examples and detailed definitions, including many of the figurative devices beyond the purview of this text, so take a look: Poets.org’s Glossary of Poetic Terms.  

Figures of Speech

Figures of speech are expressions that use words to achieve effects beyond the power of ordinary language. We’ve already discussed metaphor, simile, and anaphora. Personification is a great device that gives human qualities to something that is not human. For example, in Landi’s poem “Before the Divorce, Bed Bugs,” the bedframe is described as an “empty ribcage of slats.” Like Prometheus shaping men from mud, personification brings a human consciousness to the image.  

There are many, many more, figurative devices and there is a glossary of poetic terms from poet’s.org. The glossary is inclusive of all terms, so you’ll need to know what you’re looking for. Here are some terms to read in this glossary:

• metonymy
• synecdoche
• hyperbole
• understatement
• apostrophe
• allusion
• metaphor
• simile

The kryptonite to good figures of speech is abstraction and generalization. Abstraction is expressing a thought without a concrete image; for example, I was in the shadows of myself. A generalization is a broad, sweeping statement, also often without a concrete connection: We are all lonely in love. New poets often mistake abstraction and generalization as powerful because they make bold statements, and therefore feel powerful or impactful. Yet, the opposite is true. Abstraction and generalization might be true, but the language is not anchored to anything specifically meaningful or specific to a speaker. A way to make both abstraction and generalization particular is to use concrete nouns. I tell my students if you can touch it, it’s concrete, if you can’t, it’s not.

Examples of intangible nouns: love, grief, feelings, darkness, loneliness, fear, hope.

Examples of tangible or concrete nouns: chair, forehead, petunia, velvet, bowl, pen.

When you can express an abstraction or generalization with something concrete, this is when figurative language is at its best. Go through any poem in this text and mentally separate the nouns into either a concrete bucket or intangible bucket. Take note of the ratios you’re seeing.

Now, when it comes to the subject of poetry, there are way more poems about abstract concepts like love and death than about concrete things such as bowls and petunias. The way to write about an abstract subject is with concrete imagery. Check out Exercise 3 for the details.

Metaphor 

If I were limited to only one literary device to work with, it would be metaphor. To my thinking, a metaphor is essential to poetry because it makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange again. “Meta” in Greek means “beyond” or “carry over or after.” And for discussion’s sake, we’ll throw in Aristotle’s definition of metaphor, “metaphor consists of giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.” We know that a metaphor compares two unlike things without using “like” or “as,” but beyond this definition, the impact of a metaphor is its powerhouse.

A metaphor is a kind of transportation. We teach and learn by metaphor. When teaching a child to swim, they are instructed to doggy paddle, or move their arms as though a dog does in water, and this description makes the strange familiar. The strange and familiar swap also happens in poetry. As a parent, the worst thing I can imagine is losing a child, and thankfully I have not gone through this, but Ben Jonson has, and his poem “On My First Son” gives us who have not experienced this kind of loss, a taste of this poisonous parental grief through the metaphors in his poem. Standing over the child’s grave, the speaker says, “Here doth lie / Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”

Contrary to assumptions about many figurative devices, these devices do not attempt to be untrue or obscure meaning. In fact, a metaphor, along with other devices like simile and personification, attempt to create an exactness in experience or feeling, a truthfulness. Metaphors are after precision of meaning. Many new writers think that obfuscation is power, but the opposite is true–visibility and vulnerability are power. Choose the figurative device that reveals, not the ones that conceal. Confusion is bad, but strangeness is good. Think about the plot to a movie or book that confuses you. Chances are you give up and move on to something else, but if the plot is weird or unexpected, you stay engaged. The same is true with language in a poem. Metaphors and similes, a direct comparison between two unlike things using “like” or “as,” are a ticket to strange and engaged. Poet Matthew Zapruder says this best in his book Why Poetry, “a metaphor starts out as a connection our minds might never have made.”

A quick note on clichés, avoid them. Once upon a time a cliché was likely original, but now the expression is common and overused. Examples are: to describe “understanding” as “crystal clear,” or the swift passage of time as “time flies.” Clichés don’t offer that “connection our minds might never have made.” Go for the new and strange. If you think you’ve heard an expression before, you likely have, so don’t use it and reach for something more interesting.

An extended metaphor, one that runs throughout the poem, is called a conceit. Basically, many metaphors work toward the same goal in a poem. John Donne’s poem “The Flea” is a great example of conceit. The speaker reasons that since a flea has bitten him and the woman he wants to sleep with, their blood is already mingled, so they should have sex: “This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.”

To see where and how metaphors are created in a poem, let’s strip the poem of all figurative language. Below is a poem that appeared in the NAR, and the title will indicate much of the poem’s occasion.

Before the Divorce, Bed Bugs by Joseph Landi

We were bitten

along the repulsive blue track

of ankles and wrists, on the backs

of our heels, on toes and fingertips,

pierced to the farthest reaches

of our unstable hearts.

Darkness hid

the source of our disgust.

We sighed like trains between

stations, drawing them to us.

Skin spoke in codes of the elements,

a language for the lonely and ravenous.

Now poison’s the cure,

and home a nest of carcasses.

At the curb, mattresses

show tufted guts to joggers and stray cats.

A driver prowls cul-de-sacs,

scanning the piles

for remnants of strangers’ desires.

In a dim rented room,

he assembles the plunder–

empty ribcage of slats,

paddles headboard of leather.

He tapes shut the slash

that we carved as a warning,

resting his face on a secret hunger.

Now, I’ll rewrite the poem, stripping out anything figurative.

Before We Got Divorced, We had Bed Bugs 

Bed bugs bit us  

on our ankles and wrists,

on heels, on toes and fingertips.

We felt sad in our hearts.

We didn’t see these disgusting bugs

because they only come out at night.  

They were drawn to our breathing.

They bit our skin and drank our blood.

To get rid of them, we used poison.

We saw their carcasses

and put our mattresses on the curb.

Joggers, stray cats, and a driver

who looks for free stuff

saw them.  

He rents a dim room,

and there he assembles

the bed slats and headboard.

He tapes shut the slash

we made so he can

rest on the mattress.

Without figurative devices, particularly the metaphor between bed bugs destroying a mattress and betrayal destroying a marriage, so much is missing from the poem. The language is prosaic, and the excitement and resonance is gone. The beautiful simile, “We sighed like trains between / stations” isn’t there to build the tension with “sighs” or the distance growing between the couple like traveling trains, all the while working the bed bug / destruction metaphor. The paradox between poison and cure, both for the eradication of the bed bugs and the marriage through divorce, is gone. It’s safe to think of most language in poems as doing two or more things at once.

Allusion

An allusion in a poem is a reference to a person, literary work, or event outside the poem. As a poet, you’re assuming that the reader will have context for the reference, so you won’t need to gloss it with an epigraph or overly explain. Allusions to Greek mythology and the Bible are common. For example, in the poem below, readers are likely familiar with Persephone’s fate and the months of winter she must endure when in the underworld with her husband, Hades, who tricked her into the contract.

Persephone as Black Son by Derick Ebert

You wish you could follow me everywhere

don't you? I used to stand in your room, in your shoes

and prance. Some boys will be boys, differently.

Now I have earned the floorboards respect

they won't snitch but slumber when I glide

smoothly on their.backs, like wax I race

from the top step, spilling to the door, then

outside. I carry night on my head like a black hat

mother says, not too late please

I'm her only boy to come home before the dark

buries another sun. If she calls and no response

across valleys and hills, through cities she will storm

to find me full of thunderous laughter. What did you think?

See the ground cackles as well, then you blink and

it's winter.

Anaphora  

Anaphora is one of the under-used, excessively powerful figurative devices. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a clause, phrase, sentence or line of poetry. Rhetorically, this is a powerful device, because not only is the same cadence or rhythm used, but so is the same phrasing at the beginning of a line, while the end of the line changes. Below is a great example of anaphora guiding the start of the line with the implication of the poem spirals ever wider. As you read the poem, watch how it proceeds with chronological time, but also blurs the timeline to what ultimately matters. Can you pinpoint the moment the dying mother loses her humanity? How are the similes and metaphors working? Why is she a drive-in theater? A firework? An exhibit? Renaming a person as object removes humanity, and how is anaphora creating that work in this anticipatory elegy? It’s safe to think of most language in poems as doing two or more things at once, even if they are the same words repeating themselves.

The Day Her Speech Was Slurred by Cathryn Cofell

An emergency room doctor scheduled a CAT scan

and then an MRI

and then she was admitted

and then she swallowed steroids

and then a patch of scalp was shaved

and then they carved that pumpkin patch

and then they scooped the rotten pulp

and then they stitched the lid back on

and then speech became church

and then green gray confession

and then she unraveled

and then they opened her skull again

and then they siphoned the burning fuel out

and then they stitched again a temporary hem

and then her step was Frakenstein

and then her left eye moved to Hayward

and then they opened her skull again

and then they stopped the riot with a fire hose

and then her brain became Chernobyl

and then her insides out

and then she slept

and then her insides out

and then we lit her up like a drive-in theater

and then she performed a one-act play in four acts

and the she undressed into a red giant

and then talk became Morse code

and then she cradled me like a baby

and then I washed her like fine china

and then I held her like a baby

and then the speak of Quakers

and then rain on her quilted body

and then the drought

Exercise 1: Write a Poem Badly

Pick a poem that you’ve admired, and write it badly. That is, write it without any figurative language at all. Plain spoken and direct, no embellishments. Read the poem you’ve written and the original side by side.

Exercise 2: Use Anaphora

You’ve read Cathryn Cofell’s poem “The Day Her Speech Was Slurred,” which uses anaphora, Christopher Smart (1722–1771) wrote Jubilate Agno and a large section of this work begins with the speaker considering his cat, named Geoffory. The lines begin with the same work “For” and borrow similar structures. Read this delightful excerpt from Jubilate Agno. Use anaphora in the poem you’ll write about something you love or despise.  

Exercise 3: Go Concrete

Pick any of these abstract concepts: time, love, death, health, youth, spring. Come up with four images about it and four experiences you have had. I’ll walk you through an example. The abstract concept I’ll use is death.

four images

• a white tombstone with an eroded lamb on it
• a bird’s body below a tree
• hearing a hospital machine beep without stopping
• the coppery taste of dirt

four experiences

• when the guards of honor folded the flag from my grandfather’s coffin
• walking to school with my kids and seeing the sunflowers go to seed a little more each day
• watching my uncle take a picture of my great grandmother in her coffin
• pulling the paper-thin skin thin on my grandmother’s hand

Now, let a few select images and/or experiences guide your poem. You don’t need to use all eight, just a few. There is one thing you can’t include, and that’s the abstract word, so in the poem I write from this list, “death” can’t appear anywhere in the poem, and that includes the title.