Mapping Metaphor in Poetry: Generating New Understandings

Presented by Dixie K. Keyes

Arkansas State University

Is metaphor JUST figurative language? Consider the GENERATIVE power of

metaphor….it has constructive character “waiting to be brought to birth.”

Consider METAPHORICAL THOUGHT as an umbrella to a number of figurative language terms: simile, personification, oxymoron, hyperbole, poetic analogy…

There’s an implicit third term--understanding that is generated THROUGH metaphorical thought

Comparison

The third part: New Understandings

A description of how metaphors account for growth…. Metaphors cultivate the mind. They prepare

furrows for planting ideas, which in time grow to mature understanding. If the climate is too arid for learning or if work has been neglected for too long, metaphors can break through an unreceptive crust to more fertile ground where the nutrients of teaching can be absorbed. (Peele, 1984, p. 2)

Consider Mapping Metaphors for enhanced understanding…

Father—

Central yet absent like a tuba

Missing from a symphony

battered by Himself

broken apart and beaten,

a tuba that angered its

Player—the shine lost,

the dents deep, the Mouthpiece

still intact, lying in a pawn shop,

lost to the highest Bidder.

Father—

no longer necessary,

your shine, memories of your elegance,

and the waves of notoriety in my heart

have rubbed callous melodies—

Empty Exhaltation.

Let’s map it….FATHER like a TUBA

Target=Father Members-mind, heart,

body, effort Purpose-role model,

encourager, provider of unconditional love

Means-hugs, laughter, time, presence, support

Source=Tuba Members-shine, dents,

mouthpiece, melody Purpose-part of a

symphony, make music, deep resonance, central melody

Means-player/musician, sheet music, practice

New Understandings?

“A Rainy Morning” by Ted Kooser in his

book Delights & ShadowsA young woman in a wheelchair, wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain, is pushing herself through the morning. You have seen how pianists sometimes bend forward to strike the keys, then lift their hands, draw back to rest, then lean again to strike just as the chord fades. Such is the way this woman strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers, letting them float, then bends again to strike just as the chair slows, as if into a silence. So expertly she plays the chords of this difficult music she has mastered, her wet face beautiful in its concentration, while the wind turns the pages of rain.

Some canonical poetry…. James Wright’s “The Jewel”:

There is this cave in the air behind my body That nobody is going to touch: A Cloister, a silence Closing around a blossom of fire. When I stand upright in the wind, My bones turn to dark emeralds.

Cave = silence, a cloister Bones = dark emeralds

What does “cloister” mean? Etymology:

Middle English cloistre, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin claustrum, from Latin, bar, bolt, from claudere to close — more at close

Date: 13th century

1 a: a monastic establishment b: an area within a monastery or convent to which the religious are normally restricted c: monastic life d: a place or state of seclusion2: a covered passage on the side of a court usually having one side walled and the other an open arcade or colonnade

Epilogue By Robert Lowell

Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme— why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter’s vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write with the threadbare art of my eye seems a snapshot, lurid, rapid, garish, grouped, heightened from life, Yet paralyzed by fact. All’s misalliance. Yet why not say what happened? Pray for the grace of accuracy Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning. We are poor passing facts, warned by that to give each figure in the photograph his living name.

The Willows of Massachusetts By Denise Levertov

Animal willows of November In pelt of gold enduring when all else Has let go all ornament And stands naked in the cold. Cold shine of sun on swamp water Cold caress of slant beam on bough, Gray light on brown bark. Willows—last to relinquish a leaf, Curious, patient, lion-headed, tense With energy, watching The serene cold through a curtain of tarnished strands.

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,And Mourners to and froKept treading—treading—till it seemedThat Sense was breaking through—

And when they all were seated,A Service, like a Drum—Kept beating—beating—till I thoughtMy Mind was going numb—

And then I heard them lift a BoxAnd creak across my SoulWith those same Boots of Lead, again,Then Space—began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,And Being, but an Ear,And I, and Silence, some strange RaceWrecked, solitary, here—

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,And I dropped down, and down—

Emily Dickinson

Mapping can also lead to new understandings of TYPES of metaphor…

Extended metaphor Epic or Homeric simile Mixed metaphor Dead metaphor Synechdochic metaphor Paralogical metaphor Experiential metaphor Complex metaphor Loose or compound metaphor Implicit metaphor (tenor is implied) Submerged metaphor Tight metaphor (grounded in only one point of resemblance) Root metaphor Conceptual metaphor Dying metaphor

Let’s go beyond the lit textbook definition of metaphor….feel the power!dkeyes@astate.edu