Read: Poet’s Companion: “Smile and Metaphor,” p. 94 [RR]

James Galvan
English 306
Steve Pett

Read: Poet’s Companion: “Smile and Metaphor,” p. 94 [RR]

1. One difference between good and not-so-good poets is that the good
ones recognize when they’ve written stuff that deserves to be dumped, and load
up the truck.
2. Once, perhaps, to say “she sticks to him like glue” was fresh and
interesting, but now it’s a smile that, if it turns up in your poem, should be
sent to the Toxic Language Dump – a place we’ve invented for all those
expressions that are deadly for the art.
3. But using figurative language in poetry is more than finding a star-
tling simile or metaphor that grabs your reader.
4. Another thing about the figurative: it gives you access to words and
images that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Take the above example: in the first
case you might use words like highway, headlights, metal, screech, crush.
5. A poem may consist entirely of literal images, but they may well
resonate with metaphorical meaning.