Introduction to Metaphor:Poets use striking imaginative comparisons to go beyond the resources of literal

speech. They take us into a world of intense images, but often there is more to the image than what is apparent on the surface. When a poet says, "The bird of love is on the wing," the line is meant to call up a vivid image before the mind’s eye. But the poem is not literally talking about a bird. Instead, it compares the feeling of falling in love to the exhilaration a bird might experience in flight.

To a wholly new experience, one can give sufficient organization only by relating it to the already known, by perceiving a relation between this experience and another experience already ordered, placed, and incorporated." -- Olney

"Without metaphor, language would lose its lifeblood and stiffen into a conventional system of signs." -- Cassirer

"[poetry should] be sensuous, and by its imagery elicit truth at a flash, and be able to move our feelings and awaken our affections." -- Coleridge

"I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish." -- Malamud

Definition of Terms:Metaphor: Language used imaginatively to carry ideas and feelings that otherwise might be difficult to put into words. A metaphor is a brief, compressed comparison that talks about one thing as if it were another. The comparison is implied. It comes to the poem unannounced, without the words like or as to signal that something is not literal.

Personification: Figurative language that endows something nonhuman with human qualities, as in "the tree whispered through the wind."   Extended or Sustained Metaphor: A metaphor traced throughout a work. This follows the ramifications of the implied comparison, following up related similarities. Controlling Metaphor: When a single metaphor gives shape to a poem as a whole. Conceits: Fanciful extended metaphors. Elaborately developed, they often move along conventional or predictable lines. Cliché: A phrase which has lost its freshness due to overuse: tip of the iceberg, the bottom of the barrel, window of opportunity, hard as nails etc. Figurative Language:

Metaphor is one kind of nonliteral language under the larger blanket of figurative language: language which means more than is what literally stated. Additional subcategories for figurative language are: Metonymy: a metaphor that does not rove far afield but lights on something closely related. Synecdoche: uses the part to stand for the whole: "give us a hand" (you actually need the whole person). Or the whole may be used to stand for only the part. "Mankind was forever altered today, when the President died." Actually, not all of mankind was altered. Simile: Similar to metaphor, a brief, compressed imaginative comparison. Unlike the metaphor, a simile uses the words "like" "as" or "as if" to advertise that a comparison will follow.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Apparently with no surprise (1884)

Apparently with no surpriseto any happy FlowerThe Frost beheads it at its play--In accidental power--The blonde Assassin passes on--The Sun proceeds unmovedTo measure off another DayFor an approving God.

1. What is the first word that makes the reader understand this poem is to be read figuratively?

2. What natural phenomenon is revealed in this metaphoric poem?

3. How is figurative language in this case also imagery?

4. "A poem does not talk about ideas, it enacts them" wrote John Ciardi. Do Mr. Ciardi's words apply to this poem?

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Metaphors (1960)

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,An elephant, a ponderous house,A melon strolling on two tendrils.O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off.

1. What is the structure of this poem?

2. Why is the poem title fitting? Explain in detail.

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

For My Grandmother (1927)

This lovely flower fell to seed;Work gently sun and rain;She held it as her dying creedThat she would grow again.

1. What two things are being compared and how is it extended?