WORLD OF POETRYFigurative LanguageBy MCT and Mrs. M

WRITE A SENTENCE DESCRIBING EACH SITUATION USING A SIMILE.

1. Sue is wearing a black-and-white sweater her grandmother knitted for her.

2. Jack hadn’t eaten all day. He is at a buffet and has loaded his plate with food.

3. It is a beautiful day. You are in a restaurant overlooking the river watching the sailboats.

4. You are in a crowded elevator that has stalled.

FIGURES OF SPEECH T/P/SWhat makes poetry different from

prose?Control of sound (think about your

monologues)Different way of thinking and talking

about the worldHow is a scientist’s language

different from a poet’s?Straightforward, declarative, passive

voice, eliminates ambiguity

CREATIVE COMPARISONS Chew on this:

How would you describe the feeling you had last week when the storm occurred suddenly at the end of the day?

It can be difficult to describe accurately using simple terms, especially if you had fear and joy at the same time.

Poets know that one of the best ways to reveal the nature of something is to COMPARE it to something else!

CREATIVE COMPARISONSSomeone I loved came to visit me.My heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in

a watered shoot – Christina Rosetti

What feelings do you recognize here? Does the first sentence capture those

emotions?

THE FILTER EFFECT A comparison can act as a kind of filter,

screening out everything else and zooming in on the exact thing the writer means to say.

The apparition of these facesIn the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.-Ezra Pound

That’s the ENTIRE poem. Is it precise?

SIMILE VS. METAPHOR Simile: A comparison expressed directly,

using like or as. How could you make Ezra Pound’s poem a

simile? Would it be more or less effective? Metaphor: not stated directly as a

comparison; instead, it simply states that something IS the thing it’s being compared to.

Ezra Pound’s poem is not a metaphor because it avoids the word IS.

EMILY’S SIMILEThe day came slow, till five o’clock,Then sprang before the hillsLike hindered rubies, or the lightA sudden musket spills.

The purple could not keep the east,The sunrise shook from fold, Like breaths of topaz, packed a night,The lady just unrolled.-Emily Dickinson, 19th Century American Poet

LET’S TRY A ‘NUTHER ONEI’m Nobody! Who are you?Are you– Nobody—too?Then there’s a pair of us?Don’t tell! They’ll advertise—

you know!

How dreary—to be– Somebody!How public- like a Frog—To tell one’s name—the

livelong June—To an admiring Bog!

How would you explain the effect of this simile?

Why did Dickinson choose to compare being a public figure to a frog?

WHOA- THAT’S EPIC!Extended, elaborate simile that compares

two very different things.Just as a great wave upon the salt sea is forced

by the fury of the strong windInto a mighty swell, and rushes down upon the

deck of a shipAnd engulfs it—so the Trojans,With a loud war cry, drove their Chariots over the defensive wall To the sterns of the Greeks’ ships. – Homer, The

Illiad

FIND THE METAPHOR:The fog comesOn little cat feet.

It sits lookingOver harbor and cityOn silent haunches And then moves on.-Carl Sandburg

FIND THE METAPHOR:O love is the crooked thing.There is nobody wise enoughTo find out all that is in it,For he would be thinking of

loveTill the stars had run awayAnd the shadows eaten the

moon.-William Butler Yeats, Ye Olde

Romantic Poet

ANALYZE THIS:What is the crooked thing in the

previous passage? Why is this metaphor chosen? What tone does it convey? What one thing is it focusing on?

OH, SNAP!Earth, receive an honored guest;

William Yeats is laid to rest:

Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.-W.H. Auden

PERSONIFICATIONComparison in which something that is NOT a person is given human qualities.

“The Moon and the Yew Tree”The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right.White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime.

- Sylvia Plath How could you express Plath’s comparison of the moon in a simile?

WHAT IS BEING PERSONIFIED?I am silver and exact.I have no preconceptions.Whatever I see I swallow immediatelyJust as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.I am not cruel, only truthful—

-Sylvia Plath

Choose an object in this room and write a comparison personifying that object. Share with a partner to see if they can guess what it is!

APOSTROPHE Poetic device of addressing someone or

something not present, as though it were present.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometime whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing

wing; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep.

John Keats, “To Autumn”

OXYMORON Expression that seems to contradict itself,

but in fact, does not. Something about the contradiction reveals a

TRUTH. Adjective + Noun that don’t seem to go Ex: crisis management, elementary calculus,

good grief….can you think of more? Many, but not all, are humorous.

OXYMORONGood-night, good-night! parting is such sweet sorrowThat I shall say good-night till it be morrow.-Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet