Poetic devices 14: Personification

Personification is a common device used in poetry and other forms of literature. This is where writers ascribe a human characteristic to non-human objects or animals. Personification also occurs when writers represent an abstract quality in human form. It's the literary version of anthropomorphism.

Personification a great device to add richer description to your writing, and it helps readers to understand the scene a little better. Here's an example from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

In this instance, the poet personifies an abstract concept - Death - and gives it some human characteristics. Personification allows you to ascribe human emotions to things or concepts like this, and this can add great depth to your poetry. You might first instance write:

The rain wept in sorrow

Eh? The rain of course possesses no emotions, so how could it be sorrowful? It has no tear ducts, so how could it weep? You sound a bit crazy writing this Steve! Thanks for your unsolicited opinion. I may be, but personification gives the rain these attributes to add a creative depth. Here's another example:

Tom could hear the last slice of cake calling his name

What? Cake can't speak, so Tom certainly couldn't hear the cake actually calling him! But what the line does, is show, through the personification of the inanimate slice of cake, that Tom had a great desire to grab that last piece of cake before anyone else got there. Greedy Tom. I'll speak to his mother later. 

Have a think and see where you might be able to inject a little personification into your own writing. It can definitely enrich the descriptive power of your poetry and give it a human face. 

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

1. Simile
2. Metaphor
3. Repetition and refrains
4. Alliteration
5. Assonance
6. End Rhymes
7. Internal Rhymes
8. Rhythm and Tempo
9. Enjambment

10. Allegory

11. Metonymy

12. Cacophony

13. Calligram

Main image source: World Atlas

Our poems will be our legacy

Patience And Fortitude #2   “Legacy”

What keeps you writing poet? Will you stop before your end is near? What kinds of great works might you miss out on should you give up now?

These are a valid questions to any artist. Many cultivators of sublime creations were not even appreciated in their time…. 

Vincent Van Gough only sold one painting… tragically committing suicide because of his lack of recognition. Only a small amount of his paintings even saw the light of serious exhibitions, what did only shown to minimal praise.

Emily Dickinson  remained “zero to the bone” to the end… not recognized until her death. . She wrote more than 1800 poems… with only ten accepted for publication while she was still alive… it’s been said that the rest she sent to friends and family or kept for herself. Can you imagine?! She is an inspiration even today…

John Keats wrote the best of his works as he was slowly dying of tuberculosis around 1821, at the young age of 25. It wasn’t until 1840 that his work was recognized. Even blues icon Robert Johnson endured obscurity and just worked gig to gig until his death in 1938 at 27. Now he remains a beacon of light within the works of Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin to name a few.

Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” was published in 1854… sold fewer than 2000 copies, then went out of print. This from one friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson said at his passing, “ The country knows not yet… how great a son it has lost.” His profound naturalistic rebel attitude and self reliant swagger inspires me personally even today.

Sylvia Plath. Herman Melville. The list goes on and on…

This transcends writing forms or references. This gets to the core of our drive, and maintains our personal motivation,… as well as inertia. It challenges who we are and where we are going.

Success… failure… dogged determination to carry on regardless of outside pressures. What drove us to pick up a pen or rhyme a word in the first place?

It isn’t always to absorb accolades or seek recognition of worth. That just does not  represent healthy direction. 

It is for the sheer love that we endure the troubles, surpass the tribulations, and strive for more quality work,… better than any we have put out before. Despite setbacks, the love of writing and the sheer delight of seeing one’s finished work performed to personal expectations should be more than enough to fuel the want for more.

Patience and fortitude is what keeps us writing! Confidence in our abilities will always carry the day into brighter tomorrows. Even if that ability may not even be appreciated in our lifetime… it will remain a testament to who we are in words of fine literature forever. Our poems will become our legacy. Believe it reader!

Please feel free to tell me why you write and what keeps you on the straight path to worthy destinations in your writing! Thanks for reading and write on poets!

Matt Elmore

Poetic devices 2: Metaphors

Last week I introduced my new series on poetic writing devices and posted a piece on the use of similes in poetry. In this second post in the series we're going to explore the use of metaphor. 

Now perhaps you're thinking what is the difference between a simile and a metaphor? Well I can best illustrate the difference by employing both devices directly. I might say for example 'He has a brain like a computer!' - and that's a simile. Or, I may instead say 'His brain is a computer!' - which is a metaphor. The first device compares his brain to a computer. The second suggests it is a computer. This is the power of the metaphor. A metaphor states that one thing is another thing. Although the reader knows it isn't true, it nevertheless offers a powerful figure of speech to enrich a comparison. Metaphor goes one step beyond simile. It transforms comparison into symbolism. It is a rhetorical device. And there are metaphors everywhere just waiting for you to use them... (What could the image above denote?)

There are numerous examples of metaphor in poetry. In fact they are everywhere.

In Emily Dickinson's poem Hope we see her speaking of hope as a bird:

Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all

Hope doesn't really assume the form or characteristics of a bird of course. She doesn't even use the word 'bird' - but simply alludes to it as 'the thing with feathers'. The power of the metaphor is there for the writer to wield - and Dickinson uses the device very powerfully here to imply that hope lives like a perched bird inside her, and it sings an endless song. 

The arch proponent of the metaphor in poetry of course, has to be Dylan Thomas. In perhaps his most celebrated poem, Do not go gentle into that good night, Thomas uses night as a metaphor for dying. He's not talking about the setting of the sun here, nor is he wishing his father a good night. He's literally pleading with his to fight against death.  

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Another classic example of metaphor use in poetry is our very own Tunisian bard Rafik Romdhani. He is so prolific in the use of metaphors, that he has published an entire book of poetry called Dance of the Metaphors. Most recently, in a new collection called Vapour of the Mind, Rafik writes: 

Hours are flat tyres

on potholed asphalt roads

Dreams were first moans

before their explosions

We are figments of fiction

caught up within our own minds

This short poem is absolutely laced with metaphor. Hours become flat tyres. Dreams emerge as moans. Then explosions. He paints a dramatic and highly evocative picture of mundane every day life, with very few words. This is the power of the metaphor. Try it in your own poetry and see how far you can push it.

Steve Wheeler

Image from HippoPX used under a Creative Commons Licence

Aspiring to inspire!

Inspiration! 

What is it? What drives us to aspire to new tasks, to envelope the degrees of difficulty and overcome the highest heights? To master the navigations of damage control, and be the best at what we can do with what we have? What is inspiration?

Upon playing with my nieces that live so far away at a family reunion this weekend… I saw generations of loved ones past sparkling in their youthful eyes. It was both so endearingly sweet and sad at the same time… yet encouraging to me. The progress of our families in the existence of our times…

                                           —

Poetry can be inspiring. It draws me into its complicated webs weaved by so many poets of different cultures, places, perspectives, and most of all, dreams. This diversity feeds the poet soul, which is both curious and insatiable for information about the human condition.

Inspiring poems take readers in new directions they may have never considered when they hit the target of the heart. They aim to motivate us, direct us, and push us into becoming someone or something better than what we are. Directly, or in metaphor, these poems are the ones we like to quote or keep as a reminder when things go rough…

                                           —

Consider this invitation from “Invictus”, by William Ernest Henley, to remain strong and honorable even in the face of death…:

It matters not how strait the gate

How charged with punishments the scroll

I am the master of my fate

I am the captain of my soul

The two last lines echo the sentiment of positive construction, expression, and direction needed to keep one’s head up and stay on the ball no matter what. We go on!

                                           —

What about good old Walt? Not Walt Disney! Walt Whitman… his Song Of Myself continues to bring smiles even to this day to many an English and Literature class with the early morning rays of educational sunshine beaming through those sweet windows…

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 
  And what I assume you shall assume, 
For every atom belonging to me as

  good belongs to you.

An originality and individual value is within us all, not only to be recognized, but validated and cherished as beautiful as well. Song of Myself says this in so many ways…

    

                                           —

Take the breath of Rudyard Kipling in his monumental inspiration entitled “If”:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

This applies not only to “man” but women, children, and all human souls! I live by this fiercely bold and courageous philosophy…. “Yours is the Earth and all upon it, if you can “fill the unforgiving minute”… seize the opportunities laid before you! Take control of your destiny! Shades of Invictus… this is a prevailing theme in inspiring poems.

                                           —

Women have an equal (if not more) of a voice in poetry today than has ever been heard in the history of our prestigious craft. Women such as Rupi Kaur, Maya Angelou, Carol Ann Duffy, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson… transcend emotion into inspirational action… 

Take Wheelsong poet Imelda Zapata Garcia, who continues to encourage a strength and determination that is so original, creative, practical, fierce, and beautiful all at once. This is such an awe inspiring exposition…  “The Gambit”:

Each wrung she stepped upon
led to a faltering height
try as she might, to climb
slipped to the base of the flight
the steps which rose up
from the floor 
led straight to another
in store
Beams of illusion it seems
crept in from high up above 
with promise of hope in a dream
naught much else when
push comes to shove 
What shone at the top of the stairs
a blinding white light on the morn
was merely a glimmer of hope
which climbing that crucible 
had worn 

The promise and glimmer of hope sprinkled within this poem exhibit an unbridled exuberance to overcome the most difficult obstacles, to challenge “the gambit” of life, and come out ahead. It reflects dark and light in such a way as to cover the reader in honest shades of brilliant reality… leaving them forearmed to face the day. Such an amazing inspiration! It’s reassuring to know poets such as Imelda are out there interpreting reality for us!!!

                                          —

This is a blog for writers by writers. So I have to ask… What do you find inspiring? Does it aid in your writing? How so? Please feel free to comment below! I love hearing from you! 

Thank you for reading, and until next time… write on!! And inspire!

Matt Elmore