English Lesson 15

English 5
Lesson 15

LITERATURE
Figurative Language: Similes and Metaphors

SIMILES
A lot of writing (and poetry, as we will soon see) makes use of similes. Similes compare two things using the words "like" or "as." When our grandmother said, "The rain is like heaven's tears," we were invited to see that the rain is like something else. Examples:
Riding that horse is like going on the scariest carnival ride.
The news left him flying as high as an airborne jet.
The answer was as clear as day.
Shortly, we will be considering some similes that we encounter in poetry.
METAPHORS
Metaphors are also seen in many poems and other creative writing. Metaphors compare things by telling us that one thing is something else - without using the words as or like.
Example: The water is a sheet of glass!
We don’t say that it's like or as anything else. The metaphor simply joins these two unalike concepts, making them one in our imaginations. Another example: It's a furnace out there! Metaphors therefore make a comparison more strong and immediate by forcing the reader's mind to overlap two different concepts, making them into one.
Shortly, we will be considering some metaphors that we will find in poetry.
Figurative language helps us to express feelings and better communicate meaning. It is an effective tool that is used in writing, but like any tool, it will only work for you if you have a good understanding of how to use it. Instead of a boring description of a barn, for example, we might describe it as being as:
· red as a bushel of Empire apples (simile), or
· red like a blazing sunset (simile), or
· the barn was a proud steed standing against the rain (metaphor)

An Introduction to Poetry



"The Sloth"
by Theodore Roethke

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;
And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard—
A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;
Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.

A poem is very similar to an old friend. Both tell us the truth if we're willing to listen to what they're saying and to read between the lines (that is, also pay attention to what isn't said). Poetry gives as a sense of how things are - in the world outside, and in the world within ourselves. It makes us think about things, and feel feelings. Like a friend, poetry is good to have close by.
What are your feelings about poetry? Have you read enough poems to feel one way or the other? In the next few lessons, you will have the chance to read a variety of poems and time to think about them.
A poem shows us different feelings, senses, places, people, the ways of nature and the various ways people live life. Poems describe human experiences – feelings, images, sounds, smells, and tastes. A good poem leaves the reader with a feeling of what the poet was trying to convey. Like those who see a painting, each reader of a poem will come away with a slightly unique experience. It's important to remember that people write poems to express feelings, in hopes of sharing them with others.
We will be reading many poems that use figurative language (similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification and mood). Figurative language is particularly good at expressing inner feelings and experiences. Of course, we will be asking you to write some poetry, too.

Poetry is closely connected to music. Both music and poetry contain a rhythm and a beat (in poetry, the beat is called meter), and both can contain words referred to as lyrics. There is often repetition in both the beat and/or the lyrics. Read poems aloud. Pause briefly at the end of lines. You will begin to pick up on the rhythm if you continue this practice. Music and poetry are capable of awakening our emotions and therefore can bring us to new places within ourselves.
We will also notice a relationship between poetry and painting, as poets and painters are concerned with image-making. Painters use color to create their images. Poets use language to paint pictures with words. Words help us see the "picture" that the poet is painting.
The best way to begin to understand poetry is simply to read some poems.

The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky (what the little girl said)

The Moon's the North Wind's cooky.
He bites it, day by day
Until there's but a rim of scraps,
That crumble all away.
The South Wind is a baker.
She kneads clouds in her den,
And bakes a crisp new moon that
... greedy North ... Wind... eats ... again !
- Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

Do you notice the metaphor in this poem? The very first line, "The Moon's the North Wind's cooky" compares two unalike objects: the moon and a cookie. The poem then goes on to show the reader why the author sees the moon as a cookie. Then the author uses another metaphor. Can you find it?
That's right, "The South Wind is a baker." Notice the author doesn't say "the South Wind is like a baker." If she did, the figure of speech would be a simile, not a metaphor.
Let's look at another poem about the moon:

On a Quiet Night
by Li Po
I saw the moonlight before my couch,
And wondered if it were not frost on the ground.
I raised my head and looked out on the bright moon;
I bowed my head and thought of my far-off home.

In this poem, the writer helps us enter into his experience of missing home as he gazes at the moon. The image of "frost on the ground" helps to make the image of moonlight very concrete in our imaginations. The coolness/coldness of that image also helps to set the mood, where the writer is feeling alone and missing his home.
Here's a very different poem:

The Spider
With six small diamonds for his eyes
He walks upon the summer skies,
Drawing from his silken blouse
The lacework of his dwelling house.
He lays his staircase as he goes
Under his eight thoughtful toes
And grows with the concetric flower
Of his shadowless, thin bower.
His back legs are a pair of hands,
They can spindle out the strands
Of a thread that is so small
It stops the sunlight not at all.
He spins himself to threads of dew
Which will harden soon into Lines that cut like slender knives
Across the insects' airy lives
He makes no motion but is right,
He spreads out his appetite
Into a network, twist on twist,
The little ancient scientist.
He does know know he is unkind,
He has a jewel for a mind
And logic deadly as dry bone
This small son of Euclid's* own.
- Robert P. Tristram Coffin

* Euclid, the father of geometry

This poem is chock full of metaphors. Can you find them?
Here are just a few of the metaphors we find in this poem:
six small diamonds for his eyes - they're not really diamonds, but this metaphor invites us to see its eyes that way.
silken blouse - the spider isn't wearing a silken blouse, right? But since it weaves silk, the image creates the sense that it is wearing silk.
lacework of his swelling house - the webs aren't actually lacework as we understand it, but by combining the two images (lace and spider web), we can "see" how dainty and precise and beautiful the web is.
he lays his staircase - Well, it's not really a staircase, is it? But the image of a staircase is something we can relate to, which gives the impression of the spider going up and down, up and down.
his back legs are a pair of hands - Really? There aren't actually five fingers on his back legs, are there? The author is using this metaphor to indicate how busy and skillful the spider's back legs are at spinning.
How about similes? Can you find any similes in the above poem? ...there are only two amidst the much greater number of metaphors. Remember to look for the words like or as.
Here are the similes from this poem:
lines that cut like slender knives - the author uses this simile in a most interesting way: by saying the fine web is as hard as a knife, he is calling the reader's attention to the fact that though a web seems harmless and easily broken, for the insects that get caught, they might as well be knives.
logic deadly as dry bone - here, the author uses another unusual simile, to compare the spider's uncanny logic for creating intricate webs with an image of death - the dry bone.

"The Fish"
by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.
Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath
two or three rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen-
the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly -
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass*.
They shifted a little, but not to return my stare.
It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip-
if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it,
two heavier lines,and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge where oil had spread
a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts*,
the oarlocks* on their strings,
the gunnels* -
until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

*Perhaps unfamiliar words:
isinglass (noun) – a transparent, almost pure gelatin prepared from the air bladder of the sturgeon and certain other fishes
thwarts (noun) - a seat across a boat on which a rower may sit.
oarlock (noun) - the notch, fork, or other device on the gunwale of a boat, in which the oar rests in rowing
gunnel (noun) - the upper edge of the side of a vessel


Assignment

1. Complete the following assignments:
Look at the last poem above, "The Fish," and notice the language. Find at least one example of figurative language (mood, hyperbole, simile, metaphor), and write a paragraph about how it adds power, vividness, or meaning to the poem.

"Here and there his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper"

Well, it adds at least SOME feeling to the poem, as it makes the fish sound ancient and possibly wise.
But I CANNOT write a paragraph about it, because I barely get any feeling from poems, especially long ones.

Which poem is your favorite? Write at least one paragraph about what it is that you liked about the particular poem.

I do not like any poems at all unless they are interesting, and I have explained why countless times.

2. Write your own poem about an experience that you care a lot about. You can use a memory image (that is, a picture formed by your remembering what happened), and describe that picture for your reader. Be sure to include details (which include your feelings about what happened) that make the experience special. You can also choose to write a poem about something that’s in your world right now. Don’t worry about the form of the poem right now. You can end the lines where you want the reader to stop and pause. Just try to create a picture - using words. Let your reader see what you are saying.

I'm sorry, but I decided to use my own layout.
Here is my Free Verse poem:

The Day, by E.G. Lenac
The day is a slow snail
Not stopping to hail
Passerby and friends
Trudging around the bends
But soon the day has reached journey’s end
And it is night, who passes the next bend.