Metaphor, the crux of poetry

etaphor is the crux of poetry. Essentially, what poetry does is make comparisons, whether its against two things the poem sets forth, or against a readers silent expectation. In making these comparisons, poetry helps us re-think, re-feel, the world around us.

Metaphor is the likening of A to B. How the likening happens is the art of metaphor. Consider the words Monkey and Dentist:


A monkey is like a dentist.
A dentist is like a monkey.

Each of these are the most common form of metaphor, the simile, where the poet overtly yokes two things together by the word "like" or "as". Like is the broader of the two- it can complete a sentence without offering any explanation of how the two things are similar, also, it implies that while the things are similar, there can be differences about them.

Often, when the objects are well chosen, this type of simile speaks for itself. In C.D. Wrights poem titled "The Night Before the Sentence is Carried Out", a woman rides a bus to watch her ex-husbands execution. She is eating apples, and when the bus stalls on a dam, she throws the knife shes cutting the apples with into the water.


". . .throws it
in the water with the blade half open
like the eyes of a lawyer
who has been drinking heavy
for a month, more than a month."

Here, the simile, while describing what is going on in the poems narrative, introduces information about a lawyer (we suspect, the ex-husbands lawyer). C.D. uses the "half open-ness" of the blade to introduce something also half-open, i.e. the eyes of a lawyer. Using "as" to join two things always implies a conditional element, Ex. "dirty as a monkey!", "Sexy as a dentist?" The use of the conditional further hones the meaning and helps the reader see more exactly what you mean. Compare:


"My dentist was like a monkey"

(was he clumsy, clever, smelly)- the poem might tell us this later , but


"My dentist was as furry as a monkey"

makes us realize the exact quality about the dentist that the poet wants us to focus on.

We can map out the range of positive and negative metaphor like this:


A is like B


-My dentist is like a monkey.

A is not like B (usually followed by: "rather, A is like C", or "because")


-My dentist is not like a monkey
-My dentist is not like a monkey, rather, hes like a birdbath.
-My dentist is not like a monkey, because he bathes.

The above tend to rely more on an intellectual understanding of qualities. i.e. monkeys are smelly, people can be smelly, but this one is not, because hes unlike a monkey. When the qualities of metaphor become fantastic, or range into comparisons we cannot make sense of without further explanation, it becomes confusing- although we may be amused by an image. Any metaphor that cannot answer "how is this one thing like another", is surreal. Thats to say, it has a "super-reality" implicit in its logic- it assumes connections we cannot see. An example would be "My grapefruit is like your wombat"; without further explanation, the metaphor is non-sensical. However, these can be fun if grounded later- "My grapefruit is like your wombat- both were very odd wedding gifts."

Metaphor, as seen below, tends to be a more intense simile, resting on the idea that several qualities overlap. As such they tend to be more emotional-


A is B


-My dentist is a monkey!

A is not B

-My dentist is not a monkey!

There are also conditional metaphors that (opposed to "A is as X as B") provide a scale of quality that A and B reside on:


A is X than B


My monkey is older than your dentist.

Often if there is some play in meaning between A and B outside of the quality than we can have greater intensity within the metaphor; more information can be conveyed. For example, if a mother tells her son, "My cat is older than your girlfriend", we know that the ages are being compared, but also, we pick up on the mother using an animal to compare the girlfriend to- hence, we can assume that the comparison isnt a favorable one.


A is not X than B
A is as X as B
A is not as X as B

Are some other obvious possibilities.

When using metaphor or simile, you should consider the following question:


DOES THE METAPHOR ENHANCE THE READERS UNDERSTANDING?

If the metaphor does not deepen the reader understanding, the metaphor is simply fluff, the poet showing off his or her ability to compare things. Sometimes this can work, amusing the audience or deepening a mood, but often, fluffy metaphors are used to shore up weak verbs. For example:


"I put it on the table like a deadfall slamming a man to the ground."

could simply read,


"I slammed it on the table."

As, in the case of this isolated sentence, the metaphor merely serves as an intensifier for the relatively tame verb "put".