Reader’s Record: Poets Companion: “Simile and Metaphor” 1-26-10
pg 94 “In fact, we live in a figurative world; our language and our thinking, our very perceptions, are metaphoric. We continually make comparisons and connections, often without even realizing that we are doing so, so comfortable are we with seeing in this way.”
pg 95 “The not-so-good poets leave it in. There’s a line at the end of Norman Dubie’s “The Funeral,” about the death of an aunt, that has always haunted us: “The cancer ate her like horse piss eats deep snow.” That’s a memorable image, one so apt and effective it resonates years after reading it.
Pg 95 “ Rocks stick out near shore like heads.
Help snakes in like a shed black suit
and I cannot find you.”
Pg 96-97 “Take the above example: in the first case you might use words like highway, headlights, metal, screech, crush. In the second, you’d have a different group of words: wind, space, fall, ripcord, and the like. Take advantage of the vocabulary that accompanies your figure; exploit it for its possibilities, so it adds energy and depth to your poem.
Pg 99 “different muscles take over. Afterword,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
No comments:
Post a Comment