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