A good title should be like a good metaphor: it should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

Walker Percy

 

Dear SunWinkers:

I’ve danced* around it as long as I can. I must come back to the topic of metaphor. This is where I lose* some people. They immediately say, as though they were being confronted with somebody else’s religion,* “I don’t understand poetry!” “I could never write a poem!”

The mission of SunWinks! is to demystify the reading and writing of modern poetry. And so, sooner or later, we must tilt at the windmill* of metaphor. Poetry (as we understand it today) without metaphor is as banal as a greeting card.* Metaphor is the very stuff* of poetry.

*These are all metaphors. I will continue to mark similarly the metaphors in this column.* (yup, that’s another one…)

As you can see already, figurative language (metaphors) makes for compelling and colorful* writing, period, never mind poetry. Language itself is metaphor. Every word, Emerson said, is a metaphor; words are by their nature metaphors–the word “table” represents the four-legged piece of furniture we eat on. Words originate as metaphors; the word “column” refers to the fact that columns in newspapers were usually presented in narrow columns of type. These columns of type were so named as a visual metaphor to the tall, narrow columns which hold up ancient temples.

The word “column” itself, like virtually every other word, is also metaphorical in its derivation. The Latin columna (column, a supporting pillar) comes from the Latin columen (summit, top), because the top of the column holds up the roof. Columen in turn derives from L. collis (hill) because, I suppose, the defining characteristic of a hill is that it is high—it has a summit.

Furthermore, a metaphor isn’t just a parlor trick* performed with words. Metaphor is a way of thinking. Robert Frost said that a person who is incapable of understanding metaphor is incapable of critical thinking. Metaphors shape opinions, politics, public images, even the destinies of nations. Consider the Gettysburg Address: “our fathers” “brought forth” “a new nation” “conceived in liberty” “that that nation might live.” The nation is a metaphorical newborn baby,* a precious human being, something to be treasured and nurtured. We are fam-i-ly.*

Political catch-phrases, slogans, buzzwords, are invariably calculated metaphors, and we fail to see them as such–and see through them–at our peril. “Patriot Act,” “Ship of State,” “War on Terror,” “War on Drugs,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Big Brother,” “corporate family,” “the Free World,” “the Great Society,” “domino theory,” these are all implied metaphors designed to shape political opinion and gain popular approval. To accept these implied assertions unreflectively is to let oneself be led like sheep*, often “to the slaughter.”*

The poet’s job is to examine interior, exterior, spiritual, or political reality, and draw original metaphors which help us look at these things critically, and then to explore those metaphors and the points of comparison they suggest to discover their depths and their limits. It’s not enough, says Frost, to merely recognize a metaphor, one must be able to examine it critically and understand where the analogy breaks down. Reading and writing poetry helps us do this.

In my most recent poem, “Keeping It Together,” I draw a rather tongue-in-cheek metaphor between carbon molecules and the poet’s temperament. The carbon molecules in graphite are arranged randomly, they don’t “bond well with the other molecules,” and that’s why pencil leads break. And, metaphorically, that’s why poets “break”.* The poet is the tenor, or the target, of the metaphor. The graphite is the vehicle, or source, of the metaphor.

Let’s make it simple; let’s take the metaphor “Juliet is the Sun.” In between the target (Juliet) and the source (sun) is what linguists call the tension, the place where the metaphor and the object of the metaphor meet, that is, the implications created in the process of drawing the comparison. The stuff of the poem is this tension, the collective points of comparison or resonance. The poet^† examines: what do the points of comparison (the sun’s warmth, power, loveliness, illumination, etc.) tell us about the target (Juliet)? We infer that she’s warm, compassionate, lovely, has power over Romeo’s heart,* lights up* his life. As important, where does the metaphor break down, what are its limits? Juliet is not an incredibly massive nuclear furnace, nor is she 92 million miles away.

^†The hypothetical poet, not Shakespeare.

Sometimes it’s appropriate to explicate the metaphor inside the poem, as I do in the last line of “Keeping It Together” and, for two more examples, Frost does in the last line of his poem “Lodged,” and Baudelaire in the last stanza of “The Albatross.”

Other times, perhaps more often, it is more adroit not to spell out the target of the metaphor, but to let the reader speculate what the target might be, thus providing a richer and more engaged reading experience. I myself have had what I consider an unfortunate tendency to explicate the metaphor and spoon-feed the reader. A recent experiment of mine in not doing that is “Coming To Terms.” What do you think the rotting tooth is a metaphor for? (Don’t look at the tags.) Poems of this sort include Blake’s “The Sick Rose,” Louise Gluck’s “Messengers,” and thousands of others.

The Prompt

Write a short poem which draws a single (“extended”) metaphor. Explore in your poem the tension (points of comparison) between the metaphor and its target.

Alternate Prompt

Find a short poem of someone else’s which draws an extended metaphor. Share it with us and identify 1) the target, 2) the metaphor’s source, 3) the tension or points of resonance between the two as drawn by the poet, and 4) whether the target is spelled out or left to the reader to infer.

Instructions for submitting responses to SunWinks!

For Further Reading:

Jay Parini: Why Poetry Matters; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

George Lakoff and Mark Turner: More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide To Poetic Metaphor; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Love,

Doug

© 2014 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. Please share, reblog, link to, but do not copy or alter.