1. Send In Your Poem Today!

Roll up your sleeves and put into your "Post a Comment," below, a poem of 4-14 lines. It may be a poem you have struggled with, attempting to find the most appropriate metaphor(s).  Send me only one poem that meets these criteria:

1) You truly care about the poem-in-progress, rhymed or free verse. 2) It has one or more similes in it.  It may have metaphors. 3) But it still fails to satisfy you.  Do the metaphors really work?

Sign it with your first name, your city, and state.

Going forward, I will model, on one or more poems readers have submitted, strategies and tactics you can use that will deliver fresh new metaphors for the chosen poem(s). When you see these demonstrated, by me as well as by other participants returning their revised poems, and practice them yourself, you can do likewise to find your own best metaphors.

When you have revised your poem with your own metaphors, cut and paste both your original submission and your revised poem, the new above the old, for re-publication in a fresh Post a Comment on this blog. That way you (and your friends) can clearly see your progress.

Also, remember to invite all your friends to visit this page to see your work, and to take advantage of what they, too, can acquire for themselves as metaphor-building, and rhyme-making skills --- if they are interested. Remember your posting date, and look in the archives or prior comments, if necessary, to find your poem.

Thanks for your time and attention. Let’s get to work! You see, I am impatient for action, movement, achievement.  Yours.  There is no justifiable pride like the pride you can take in self-accomplishment.

Let's go to the Post a Comment Box!

OR,

In case you want a little more orientation before you put your fingers to the keyboard, consider the following:

Metaphor may be most simply defined by comparison with a simile. (We’ll have much more to say later about similes and how easily it is to develop them as a step in finding metaphors for your poem.)

For now, in a simile we say, for example, that love (an abstraction) is like the flames of a fire leaping in my heart. The word “like” is the indication that we are drawing a comparison between two unlike things. Or, in a verbal phrase, the word “as” functions the way "like" functions in the sentence: love is as though a fire were leaping within my heart. They both make a comparison.

The roots of the word “metaphor,” in the context of poetry, essentially mean "bearer of transferred, overlaid, newly combined (thus fresh) multiple-level meanings or images." In a metaphor we say, “my love is my heart's bonfire -- its flames leaping into the night sky.” Notice the "were leaping" in the paragraph above becomes active and much more powerful.  Notice, too, the overlaid, multiple, and far-reaching images.  (And notice there are no signposts, either “like” or “as.”)

A metaphor utilizes a verb (“is” or preferably a strong action verb) and makes a single entity of the two actions, images, or situations  that a simile only compares. Future blogs and comments will illustrate this distinction more fully, with your own poems.  As you observe this process modeled on a variety of different poems contributed by different people, you'll see how easy this is to do when you ask yourself the right questions.

This blog will also demonstrate the role of rhyme in generating imaginative metaphors through broadened peripheral vision. It is actually easier to write a good finished metaphor poem with rhymes, due to the expanded peripheral vision they bring, than in free verse.

Can you believe that?

It’s true.  It's hard to believe after a hundred years of "free verse." We’ll learn why, and how, in a future session, using 21st Century, post-9/11 topics, imagery, and sentiment rather than those characterizing late 19th Century poetry.

Okay!  Enough talk! Roll up your sleeves and let’s get started! Cut and paste into your comment box a poem that meets the 3 criteria at the top of this page. Copyright remains with you, so don't worry about that.

I look forward to seeing your poems and modeling solutions for you.

Leland Jamieson