You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [24]
While a simile explicitly compares one thing to another, a metaphor implicitly compares, without use of the words like or as. (The term metaphor comes from the Greek metapherein, which means "to transfer.") A metaphor transfers the attributes of one thing to another. In essence, it equates one thing with another. Instead of presenting similarity, as "my Luve's like a red, red rose" does, a metaphor equates: "my Luve is a red, red rose." The speaker's love isn't like a rose; she becomes a rose, with all the rose's pleasant associations and attributes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor . . . it is also a sign of genius, since good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars." Samuel Johnson noted that metaphor "is a great excellence in style . . . for it gives you two ideas for one."
Metaphors are created in a number of ways. One noun can be associated with another noun through the preposition of (as shown in chapter four): a teacup of joy, a teacup of sorrow. A noun can be associated with another noun through the verb to be: "History is a clumsy cape," writes Kathleen Halme in her poem "Every Substance Is Clothed." In this metaphor, the abstraction history becomes something concrete, a cape. It trails behind us. We wear it, taking it with us wherever we go. Because history in this case is a "clumsy" cape, it gets in our way. It encumbers and limits us, as the past can limit the present.
Metaphors can be created through verbs that have specific applications: "Dreamy cars graze on the dewy boulevard," writes James Tate in his poem of that title. The verb graze describes how cattle feed. Here it implies that the cars are cattle meandering along the boulevard. They're big, bulky, and move slowly, aimlessly. Notice that the adjective dewy reinforces the metaphor's image: The boulevard is a dewy field early in the morning.
A single metaphoric concept may even run throughout a poem in a sequence of related metaphors. In such a case, called an extended metaphor, the sequence is highly developed, and numerous associations are brought forth. Robert Frost called metaphor "saying one thing in terms of another." Extended metaphor makes an entire soliloquy of that saying. Reread Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), which appears on pages 9-10, and note its sequence of metaphors. It makes use of an extended metaphor that relates the poem's subject to various aspects of summer. The metaphor extends throughout the poem.
While simile and metaphor are the most common figures of speech, others will also benefit your poems. Overstatement (also called hyperbole) is exaggeration used for emphasis or humor. When the speaker of Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" says, "And I will make thee beds of roses / And a thousand fragrant posies," he uses overstatement in trying to convince a woman of his love. Their life together, his overstatement wishfully implies, will be a bed of roses.
The opposite of overstatement is understatement, which presents something as less than it actually is. Understatement creates emphasis because the reader perceives the difference between what is said and what is. When the speaker of Dorothy Barresi's "The Jaws of Life" says, "You think life owes you—what? Happiness? / A certain modicum of headache relief?" the reader sees the difference between a desire for happiness and a desire for "headache relief." Sometimes all we would like is to be free of the pounding between our temples. Perhaps life doesn't owe us happiness; freedom from pain will suffice. That difference is effective understatement.
Paradox is a statement that at first seems contradictory but is nonetheless