You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [25]
Metonymy substitutes one thing for another. Christina Rossetti's "A Life's Parallels" begins, "Never on this side of the grave again." Here, as in other poems, the grave is a substitute for death. The term used as a substitute must be closely associated with the term it stands for to make the association readily apparent. Because the grave is closely associated with death, it stands in well.
Synecdoche is a special type of metonymy. It uses a part to represent the whole, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Pains of Sleep": "Ere on my bed my limbs I lay." The term limbs represents the entire body. Synecdoche may also use the whole to represent a part. In Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra, the term Egypt often refers to Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. The whole represents a part.
Synaesthesia describes something usually perceived by one sense in terms of another sense. In "The Garden," Andrew Marvell writes, "a green thought in a green shade," describing things felt—thought and shade—in terms of vision. In "I Heard a Fly Buzz," Emily Dickinson writes, "With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz," describing something seen, Blue, in terms of sound.
You'll find uses for all these figures of speech, but you'll likely write similes and metaphors most often. Beware, however, the mixed metaphor, a metaphor in which the elements are incongruous, as in "His proposition ran aground on the brick wall of her refusal." The mistake here is that a metaphoric ship (his proposal) may run aground on a reef, a shoal or a shore, but not on a brick wall. All three words—reef, shoal and shore—fix the metaphor nicely. Each also provides alliteration with the main word of the metaphor, refusal: The r of reef and shore and the l of shoal create an echo with the r and l, respectively, of refusal. The alliteration unifies the metaphor through its echoes.
The art of simile and metaphor doesn't lie in extravagant complications, not even in extended metaphors, but in clean, clear, crisp associations. "All the world's a stage," writes Shakespeare in his play As You Like It. In "The Unbeliever," Elizabeth Bishop writes, "asleep he curled / in a gilded ball." In "For the Union Dead," Robert Lowell writes of "a Sahara of snow." These are insightful figures of speech. They present strong images, make interesting sounds and, in their associations, create levels of meaning. For every figure of speech you use in a poem, you may write five, ten or twenty versions of it, but the work—the play—is well worth it. Good figures of speech enrich your poems beyond measure.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Write five versions, as quickly as you can, of each of the following. Don't worry about making sense. When you finish, put a check by the similes that interest you most.
The snow fell like ______
Like a ______, he whisked the broom across the floor.
Lovely as a ______, she danced a fluid waltz.
He was as puzzled as ______
In her dream a sparrow, like a ______, alit on a porch rail.
2. Write a paragraph describing in detail one of your favorite possessions. Write another paragraph describing in detail a good friend. Now write a draft about the friend in terms of the object. Write a draft about the object in terms of the friend.
3. Write a draft about your first romance. Use, in this order, overstatement, paradox, synecdoche, understatement and synaesthesia. Include the title and a lyric from a popular song of that time.
Rooms With Echoes: Devices of Sound
Sometimes, listening to someone speak, I lose myself in the voice. Whether strong and assertive or mellow and melodic doesn't matter; the voice itself carries me along like a leaf on a stream. Sometimes I don't even hear the words. The sounds enchant me. Poetry works that way. Sounds are another part of