T.S. Eliot

SunWinks! March 8, 2015: Rhymes with “Economy”

[This column first appeared in slightly different form on Gather in 2012]

SunWinksLogoDear SunWinks! Symbiotes:

Metonymy!  (gesundheit…)

Pardon my Greek… The word “metonymy” itself may look as arcane and hairy as, say, onomatopoeia, but like onomatopoeia, you can find metonymy almost anywhere you look! Metonymy (meh-TAWN-i-mee) is the rhetorical figure in which an object is referred to by substituting something—usually smaller and more concrete—that is related to, symbolic of, or a constituent of that object.

An individual instance of metonymy is called a metonym. The type of metonym which consists of a constituent or component part of the object referred to is called a synecdoche (sin-ECK-duh-key). We use metonyms every day without even thinking about it. Here are a few familiar examples. You can think of dozens more. Continue reading →

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SunWinks! January 18, 2015: Signed, Sealed, Delivered.

SunWinksLogoDearest SunWinkers:

Back at Week 8 of the old Gather column, the poetics topic was the symbol. I am as qualified to discuss this topic today as I was then, which is to say, pretty darn little. Somewhere on the level of, “I don’t know much about symbols, but I know what I like.” Symbolism is a complex subject, the scope of which is on the order of “mythology” or “imagery.” Thousands of books have been written on the subject.

This discussion will be free-wheeling, personal, selective, and shamelessly borrowing from the syntheses of more-qualified thinkers. For the purpose of our discussion, the symbol is an image which signifies the theme of a poem (in our case) in some way. By “signifies” we mean: the symbol is a visual image which represents an idea in an abstract way, like a hieroglyph or a heraldic symbol on a coat of arms. We know what the symbol means because it’s a widely understood element of our culture. Continue reading →

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