FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN POETRY

• Poems renew our sense of the world of language, and thereby make us better equipped with the many vicissitudes of life.

• Individual poets vary widely in the degree of “unnaturalness” they introduce to their readings, but in virtually all cases their goal is the same: to destabilize the familiar world of their listeners, to make them hear anew.

• It is not the subject that makes her work poetic, but rather her approach to that subject.

• The effect of poetry depends on the combination of a number of elements (concision, imagery, grammatical parallelism, sound organization). It is this constant and complex interplay that distinguishes poetry not simply from newspapers, but from virtually all prose. While a novel or short story will undoubtedly reveal more careful organization than a newspaper article, it will never achieve the concentration and variety of patterning found in poetry.

• Every figure of speech can be divided into TWO parts corresponding to what is literally said and what is meant.• What is literally said, when it stands for

something else, may be termed the image. What is meant, what the image stands for, may be called the subject.

• Of the hundreds of figures of speech, four have been singled out by the literary theorist Kenneth Burke as figures of thought, as indispensible means to the discovery and representation of reality. • The four master tropes are metaphor,

metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.

METONYMY

• Metonymy is substitution of the name of an attribute or an adjunct for the name of the thing meant. To put it another way, it is substitution based on contiguity or proximity.

METONYMY• effect for cause ('Don't get hot under the collar!' for 'Don't

get angry!');• object for user (or associated institution) ('the Crown' for the

monarchy, 'the stage' for the theatre and 'the press' for journalists);

• substance for form ('plastic' for 'credit card', 'lead' for 'bullet');

• place for event: ('Chernobyl changed attitudes to nuclear power');

• place for person ('No. 10' for the British prime minister);• place for institution ('Whitehall isn't saying anything');• institution for people ('The government is not backing

down').

SYNECDOCHE

• Synecdoche is the substitution of part for whole or whole for part.

• At the same time, our synecdoche is a metaphor since we are saying that the part resembles the whole, that the microcosm is a blueprint of the cosmos or world.

• On the other hand, if the synecdoche does not posit a resemblance between part and whole, it must be a metonymy since the part is an adjunct of the whole and vice versa. A hand has something of the relation to the sailor or farmworker it belongs to as a sword has to a soldier or a pen to a writer who wields it .

IRONY

• Irony is the substitution of a statement for its opposite. Put another way, in irony what is said in some way contradicts what is meant. The contradiction need not be absolute. In irony, what is said may be understood as true in one sense and false in another.

IRONY

• Irony may thus reflect the opposite of the thoughts or feelings of the speaker or writer (as when you say 'I love it' when you hate it) or the opposite of the truth about external reality (as in 'There's a crowd here' when it's deserted). It can also be seen as being based on substitution by dissimilarity or disjunction.

METAPHOR

• Metaphor is a “device for seeing something in terms of something else.”• “It brings out the thisness of a that, or the

thatness of a this” (Burke 503). • Metaphor is the substitution of a word, image,

or idea for another, based on an implied resemblance or analogy.

BONSAI BY EDITH TIEMPO

All that I loveI fold over onceAnd once againAnd keep in a boxOr a slit in a hollow postOr in my shoe

All that I love?

Why, yes but for the moment-And for all time, both.Something that folds and keeps easy,Son’s note, or Dad’s one gaudy tie,A roto picture of a young queenA blue Indian shawl, evenA money bill.

BONSAI BY EDITH TIEMPO

It’s utter sublimation,A feat, this heart’s controlMoment to momentTo scale all love downTo a cupped hand’s size.

Till seashells are broken piecesFrom God’s own bright teeth,All life and love are realThings you can run andBreathless hand overTo the merest child.

POETRY AND METAPHOR

“. . . there are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority. Poetry is simply made of metaphor...Every poem is a new metaphor inside or it is nothing. And there is a sense in which all poems are the same old metaphor always.” –Robert Frost

BREAKING THROUGH BY MYRNA PENA REYES 

Haltingly I undo the knots around your parcel that came this morning.A small box should require little labor,but you’ve always been thorough, tying things tight and well. the twine lengthens, curls beside the box. I see your fingers pull, snapping the knots into place (once your belt slapped sharply against my skin) 

BREAKING THROUGH BY MYRNA PENA REYES 

You hoped the package would hold its shape across 10,000 miles of ocean. It’s not a bride’s superstition that leaves the scissors in the drawer. Unraveling what you’ve done with love I practice more than patience a kind of thoroughness I couldn’t see before.  I shall not let it pass. My father, this undoing is what binds us.

ACTIVITY

• Provide a brief summary of what the poem is about. • Give three metaphors used in the poem to

support your summary.