By Metaphors And Similes
When Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage” he compared the world with a stage. This direct comparison is a metaphor. I can say that metaphor comes out of observation; one of our poetic elements. We can assume that Shakespeare observed the stage daily and this might have triggered the art of metaphor in him which led to forming this particular metaphor.
The metaphor should be able to paint a picture or image in the reader’s mind. Imageries can also be developed if we learn to use metaphors properly. There can be elements of imagery in metaphors. Metaphor is a broad term that also incorporates simile. Simile is the indirect comparison with the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. These are non-literary elements and are the tools of artistic worship that differentiate a poem from a normal conversation. Social values if embedded in a metaphor can function well. For example, if we say “the moon today is a weeping bride” we hint at a marriage ceremony which is a social event.
There are different types of metaphors. I will cite few poems and explain them:
The Road Not Taken- Poem by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps a better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
It leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- By Robert Frost
This poem is an example of an extended metaphor. The two roads can be compared with two choices in life. The poet has also compared himself with a traveler which he is while he is observing the roads in the woods.
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Also Read: 10 Elements Of Good Poetry
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I would also like to state here that poetry can even be written without simile and metaphor. American poet William Carlos Williams did not use these elements. He wrote poems such as:
The Red wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This poetry of object is a modernist approach to poetry.
Let’s look at poetic elements in American poet Billy Collin’s poem. This poem is titled “Introduction to Poetry”.
Introduction to Poetry | Poem by Billy Collin
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
The first poetic element here is a simile. Like has been used in the third line. “like a color slide.”
I would like to cite a poem by esteemed Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu Sharma. The poem has used a simile which is very captivating. The poem is from his collection “A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems.” The poem is titled “Asleep Like.” I cite the poem because it has mythology combined with it and it begins with a simile. The poet takes us through real journey, but maintains his artistic craft in a heart-moving manner. The poem has part I, part II, III, IV and V. Heart’s percussion has been compared with varied things. What a heart beat can contain and recollect is thrilling to see. The first two parts of the poem is filled with similes. Let us also look at the whole poem. The comparison with the use of ‘as’ has also been written in the poem when the poet mentions:
holding
ecstatic twigs,
dry as eagle bones.
The poet also uses metaphor towards the end of the poem where one thing has been turned into another. It sounds like extended metaphors.
the conch shell
of Grandpa has turned into
an abode
of termites,
and flames
of the wicks in the mouth
of the multi-pronged brass
prayer lamps have become
tiny piles of ash…
Here, goes the complete poem:
Asleep Like
I
Like an aging
Vishnu
On his
Soft python bed
Like my grey-haired
grandma on
her silver
spangled cots,
like a Naga
sadhu on
the flaming
bed of embers,
his dreadlocks
shaking like
my father’s
feathery lungs,
like a shaman
in ecstasy
on a floor
of gleaming nails
his drum
counting fractured
seconds of
my heart’s
percussion…
II
Like my grandma
asleep
on a plump
bubble
of a folk song
out of which
once
a black bird-like
thing
rushed out
and came
flying at us.
III
Yes, I saw it coming
with my own clear eyes,
a black blur
that whizzed past me
through
the soft airs
of my Punjabi
courtyard
and plummeted
in her bony chest
and right away
I saw her
start yelling
Oooooooh,
ooooooooO
Ram, Ram
haihaihaihaihaihai Seapa,
its flame
burning the walls
of her throat
and in a second
the silence
of the whole courtyard
came crashing
like a frantic clamping
of her toothless
gums, making
women
from the Mohalla
gather around
her sparkling cot,
all dressed
up in white,
and start
beating their plump
breasts so hard
my eyes hurt,
a white sea
of suffering raging
In the long
Dalan hall
shaking the
mighty mask
of Hanumana
that my wrestler
Grandpa
wore in the spring
Baisakhi fair
every year…
IV
That was
the last I saw
of Original
Invisible in the air,
the shaking
of bones around the serpent shrines
heavy iron whips that
went hysteric over the bleeding backs.
I can hear
the sound of the whips
thrashing the backbones
Maddi, Satya Pal, Rangeela Untouchable
Ragunath Pundit, and Lal Badhshaw,
that paralytic Sufi saint in green,
saliva dripping
from his twisted mouth
a blessing
straight from God,
my bones
squeaking to the thorb
of hand drums
beaten by the singers
standing
in front of the shrine
behind us
in semi circle
holding
ecstatic twigs,
dry as eagle bones.
I hissed, lay on the baby
iron whip placed
on the cement-plinth
for an hour and then lifted it
and heard
it fall with the weight
of the whole earth
on my bony back…
V
That was last I saw
of the solemn silence of the sacred sounds.
Now the moss has gathered
over the vermilion mask,
a film of dust
has covered ebony black Saligram,
its sesame seeds herded away
into the wintry ant cellars in Paatal
halos around the Lord’s framed images
dimmed in the laboratories of my travels,
the family trident
of Guru Gorakshnath has rusted,
the sacred ribbon
wrung around its neck,
just a thread
of serpent Takshiknath’s slender body,
moth-eaten
smelly and stale
Rats have dug
holes into the sheep skin
of shiva’s hand drum
and spread virus of gloom,
the conch shell
of Grandpa has turned into
an abode
of termites,
and flames
of the wicks in the mouth
of the multi-pronged brass
prayer lamps have become
tiny piles of ash…
There are
- Standard,
- Implied,
- visual,
- extended and
- mixed metaphor
Standard metaphor can act like common direct comparisons or being something else. “I am a waterfall” can be an example of a standard metaphor. Visual metaphor can help to form imageries. They need to be well imagined and fit to the particular situation. Metaphors can be tough. It can deride the writing and can deviate a meaning in a poem. Similes are safer to use. Ideas or functions can develop in a poem if these figurative elements are properly used. The meanings of simile and metaphor are not literal, they invite us to think and perceive differently. The meaning is conveyed in a poetic way. It is just an artistic way to say something. Similes and metaphors are rhetorical elements. Implied metaphor uses the expression without directly mentioning the thing compared with. A person can be compared with an animal if one writes “The class teacher howled the warning.” Here, the class teacher is not directly compared with fox, but the word howled makes us imagine fox or animals in the line. Without the use of like or as the comparison has been made. Mixed metaphors are used for humorous effects.
They might sound absurd. It produces a combined effect. For example, “when the time heated he became a cold ice.”
Metaphors are also used in Novels and movies apart from poetry. In advertising visual metaphor is used. There is one common example of understanding a visual metaphor. Besides a poster of a sports car if it is written “Ford; a cheetah” we can understand that it is a visual metaphor where the sports car has been compared with the visual imagery of a running cheetah.
Now, I would like to cite a poem from “Notes of Silent Times” by Nepali poet Mahesh Paudyal. Let us analyze the use of metaphor in his short poem.
Depth | Poem by Mahesh Paudyal
You are a mountain, and I salute you
And I—mere water on the ground.
I know you need some height to loom upward
And I, even without any depth
Can absorb the whole of your height
In the form of a reflection.
Here, the poet has compared himself with the mere water on the ground. In the beginning, he states that he is mere water on the ground, and in the end, he performs a function; the function of reflecting. The whole stress in the poem lies in the water which is more powerful than the mountain. The metaphor will lead our lines to perform a function as well. If we begin from the metaphor we can find meaning in our poem with its help. A poetic way to look at objects begins from this dissection and strong idea forms in the poem.
Similes can also be divided into types, but we care about its function of comparison rather than types. Simile uses like and as and they always stand out in the crowd. Simile can also perform the same function as metaphor, but it is easy to use and can form coherence inlines easily. Similes and metaphors are called figurative languages because they aim to form a figure of representation which is not like the normal use of language. They are rhetorical sets of language which alleviate the height of the poetic diction. Poetry being the highest form of expression uses these kinds of figurative language freely. I suggest you always try to figure out the comparisons, whether in the form of a simile or metaphor.
There is one point that should be noted in the case of simile. The point is that similes use attributes along with ‘like’ or ‘as’. The common use of simile is with the use of ‘like’ rather than as and the attribute or quality of a thing compared with is also elaborated with the use of ‘like’. For example, if we say: I weep like the moon, we are using a simile because we are comparing the weeping with the moon. We can make this clearer by adding an attribute to the moon. We can provide quality to our object of description or comparison. We can say: I weep like the cursed moon. Here, cursed is the quality. Simile makes me remember personification. Here, in ‘I weep like the cursed moon’, we are attributing a human quality that has been attributed to the moon indirectly; ‘the moon weeps like me’ can also be said which would form a personification— providing human’s perception to the moon or nature. Personification is also one of the literary elements.
I would like to cite my poem from my book “The Poetic Burden and Other Poems.” I will cite one poem for metaphor or direct comparison and one for simile with attribute.
City – Poem by Sushant Thapa
In the backdrop of the blue light window
glows the view of the city.
Sweating brows and faces with red light reflect the inner
sheltered caprice of the city.
Light emitted by a moving vehicle in the crossroad meets the
illusioned traveler standing on the roadside.
When the world fatigued by its larger tirings hides its underbelly
in the city
what glows in the aftermath is the city with its dwellers’ notion.
Dwellers are the city.
What stays with them is the city.
What goes with them is the city.
Like a bus en route inside the city,
what moves is the world inside the city.
When dwellers look out from the backdrop of a moving bus,
they see their inward self,
and when they look inward they reflect their outward self.
Every city lives the world in it.
In this poem, dwellers are compared with the city. This is a metaphor or direct comparison without the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’. The line “Dwellers are the city” is the use of the metaphor where dwellers are compared with the city. In this poem, there is also a simile, but the attribute has not been used. “Like a bus en route inside the city” is the simile.
I would like to cite my poem “The Recurring Dream” for the attribute used in simile. There is a line that reads: Like an exceptional humming of a bird at midnight/ The hour that strikes me is joyful.
The humming of a bird has a quality of the art. ‘Exceptional’ is an attribute or quality described to humming. What kind of humming? The answer is ‘exceptional’ humming which is also a simile.
The Recurring Dream
Simply I lie
With the ease at dusk, the late dusk
Falling from the wide pink sky
I can talk about the morning, at night
Before the sun rises
Like an exceptional humming of a bird at midnight
The hour that strikes me is joyful
I have nowhere to go
Wandering I am in my thoughts
Pondering I am with that image in my head, suddenly
Looming and forming a brown boat lonely and wet;
In the vastness of the dark river
In my recurring dream
I see a sailor rowing a boat at night in the dark river
But I dream the dream in half,
Halfway the sailor sails the boat and I wake up and
Lose the dream
Perhaps I will complete the dream in my reality and
Will cross the river of life.
Read More From Sushant Thapa:
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