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Essay on Metaphor
This has been published a couple of times:
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Poetry is a metaphorical language, so we start with the metaphor.
The Metaphorical And The Conceit
As It Speaks In Poetry, And/Or Poetic Prose
The common presumption:
That the denotative is the dominate thrust of poetry and poetic prose rather than the connotative.
But is it so? For the connotative is the fertile ground from which all metaphorical devices take form. The use of a diversity of metaphorical devices is not new to prose or poetry. Melville's, 'Moby Dick' is a fine example of the extended metaphor used in the prose, the novel and Rainer Maria Rilke's sonnet, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" is a fine example of the use of the metaphor in poetry. Especially where Rilke compares the headless torso with its snapped off appendages to a bursting star and a wild beast.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star; for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
That Apollo's expanded chest cavity, that holds his heart of being, is still a star with its five extremities broken off. We just begin to touch upon this metaphor's far reaching intent when we realize the transformation of distance and expansion involved in how this relates to the wild beast's fur. The span of time and space that holds the enigmatic within an eternal depth of his metaphorical statement. I think the understatement here is the word "transformation." A transformation both from outside the body in understanding what is seen as broken "a connectedness with like forms, as the wild beast's fur; and yet there is a feeling of separateness" what waits inside the body, to only know one's own landscape of personal feelings bursting in any singular moment like the twinkling of a distant star. Rilke also stated in one of his prose poems; "For The Sake Of A Single Poem:"
"For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions? For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. ?And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves? only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them."
Poems or poetic prose are communications in the form of feelings bound in connectedness, as opposed to being language to be interpreted into specific meaning, but even beyond that they are transformations of the poet or writer's internal landscape pointed at the universal or archetypal. They are to be felt not understood. The feelings of language most definitely communicate beyond the understanding of the meaning of words even as they are expressed in written language. For beyond the unique usage of figurative language the poetic form should have the craft and power to transform the reader as the experience originally moved the writer.
Communication of an internal universe is central to the consciousness of the poem and poetic prose. The poetic is absorbed more than it is understood. It should be written to envelope the reader not explain emotions or preach sermons to readers. Therefore it needs metaphor, ambiguity, and conceit, the extended metaphor?(Please see the included glossary of metaphorical devices), the extended ground of the implied. The poetical needs an abundance of connotation however it can be arranged by the writer. The more unique and creatively the poetic devices can be presented, the better.
This doesn't? mean that a poem or poetic prose should not have intent or content. It just means that content and intent in the best of poems is somewhat subterranean to the surface or story-line of the congealed poetic presentation. That there appears to be something thematic at the entry level, but below the surface there should be molten magma, a viscous of pressed out heat and liquid rock. A cave or tube of flowing lava, a poem is like a squeezed-out bullet in this way. There is a shell casing that holds an explosive power. And there within the casing is also a primer ready to meet its percussive contact. As well as a distant and faint target at which the whole thing is aimed to meet its final mark. It does not, necessarily, need all readers to observe its conclusive results; it is bound to change the moon-like harden landscape by its depth of penetration. One opening in the earth will suffice to mark that its capable capacity is known. If the poetic flow of the magma-bullet hits its bulls-eye, all is changed within the reader. And the implosion of the metaphor within the heart is doing what it is intended to do in its poetical presentation when you have the power, skill and foresight to hit the mark on the dime.
In this time of television and instant response, no one wants to dance to wisdom''s slow piano-waltz; pay any attention to the ancient wall of inner concern. But time worn are the stones within this handmade wall, and time worn it will wear its renewed spiritual perception off in a unique and slowly revealed way. This is the invigorating energy and pulse of better poems or poetic prose. That the reader is allowed their distinctive epiphany long after they have assimilated the poetic. That the realization process could be a tiresome wind lifting grains of timeless sand to wear upon the stones of the internal sphinx. Long after the discharge from the shell casing the metaphorical projectile hits its marked center to implode and burn its way into the heart. In truth the shooter or the shot does not have to be remembered if the target is hit. That the writing is only the catalyst of reality. And the real intention is not the poet or the poem but the objective of the listener. That if the writer changes someone's worldly perspective, all his endeavors as a writer are to be commended. This is the use of the skill involved in the writer's metaphorical craft. For the reader has been acknowledged and accepted by the writer to become who and what they are in the event of the readers musings. They are allowed to be who they are when opened to the presentation of the poem. Spirit being one of the prime movers and contention of the poetic, in my way of thinking. This is letting the metaphor bring and fetch what it is intended to be and do. Well working metaphors being the craft of poetry.
For within any metaphorical presentation the parts are greater than the whole. That in a Pythagorean ontological sense of a quantitative combination of elementary units, I believe the psyche is the center of both the release of the metaphorical conceit and the conceit's contact of absorbed repercussion, The metaphor's recovered internal reconstruction from its immeasurable fractionation. That the metaphor's infinite connotation becomes singular again within the reader's own inner space. That the archetypal is understood through an archetypal presentation. And this can be applied to poetic prose as well as poetry. For as Carl Jung says:
An archetypal expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors. If such a content should speak of the sun and identify with it the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the power that makes for the life and health of man it is neither the one thing nor the other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or less adequate expression in all these similes, yet, to the perpetual vexation of the intellect, remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula. For this reason the scientific intellect is always inclined to put on airs of enlightenment in the hope of banishing the specter once and for all. Whether its endeavors where called, Enlightenment in the narrow sense, or Positivism, there was always a myth hiding behind it, in new and disconcerting garb, which then, following the ancient and venerable pattern, gave itself out as ultimate truth. i.e. (The collective Unconscious, Myth, and the Archetype/ From Literature In Critical Perspectives)
So, it is with metaphor, that poetic writing presents itself with a greater intrinsic reality to the reader. That metaphor positions itself to the wider adaptive side of personal experience. And in this way, it allows the reader to spiritually grow more through the expansion of the writer's compressed metaphorical expression, to broaden the readers individual or peculiar self awareness. A metaphor pushes and pulls at the imagery within the poetic arrangement for a greater understanding from the reader. It may lose something in accuracy but it gains it back in brevity and transience. That it begins to linger like an unforgettable aroma within the readers mind. Here is a statement taken from the "Art of Chinese Poetry" by James J. Y. Liu, that tells us of the universal concerns of poetry, of the poetical;
Poetry is at once a source of strength and of weakness, for on the one hand it enables the writer to concentrate on essentials and be as concise as possible, while on the other hand it leads easily to ambiguity. In other words, where poetry gains in conciseness, it loses in preciseness. As far as poetry is concerned, the gain is on the whole greater than the loss, for, as Aristotle observed, the poet is concerned with the universal rather than the particular, and the poet especially is more often concerned with presenting the essence of a mood or a scene rather than with accidental details?The world in a grain of sand.
Metaphorical language breaks away from the literal and the direct significance of words to create special meaning and extraordinary effects. Metaphors present turns and unique thought that change the literal meaning of words to a suggestive matrix. It is through these forms of figurative speech that the poetical evolves its connotative depth. Its ability to present one dramatic example while completely meaning quite another issue, situation, or circumstance for the avocation of the whole, to speak of what is nameless. Robert Frost said,
"Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another."
The metaphorical appears as a kind of unique form woven into language and writing, and it is actually something that is not separate from the individual form of a single piece. It would be bizarre to argue a firm case that it is only a part of the whole, for poetry or poetic prose are not without figurative speech as form. To attempt to present such a case would seem to me to be a doggerel position. A gutless fish without a backbone, a spineless wonder for sure. This is why it is so difficult to suggest a change in wording within the form of a poem; as we all know, when giving and receiving a critique, shifting the poetic presentation slightly changes the individual piece. The difficulty arrives because the metaphorical is the presentation of the poetic that is affixed as the form itself. And if you do change the form you change the metaphorical, and vise versa. With my understanding of different forms, I have to say I believe that the "Metaphorical Form" becomes "The Poem" itself? or the poetry in the case of poetic prose. The medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan, once said, but beyond that, I dare say the loop doubles back upon itself, like a Mobius Strip becoming what it isn't: an endless string within the heart: The metaphor being what it is within the poetic. The other side of a one sided thing, which is quite difficult to understand in the literal sense, but it is not that hard to grasp in the poetic sense. Still many will be caught in the premise where I started. That the denotative is the dominate thrust of poetry and poetic prose rather than the connotative. Or that one style of poetry is more inclusive than another when it comes to the metaphor, as in the choice of form-poetry verses free verse. Personally I find this all absurd, for they all have their unique presentations of metaphor with many similarities as well.
But let me put forth this concept; A "What if" concept: Rather than the traditional and anti-traditional scope of contemporary metaphorical constructions. What would happen if the writer provides for the untraditional concept, that which would allow him or her to use everything and anything either from the traditional or anti-traditional, coming up with something very new. That the untraditional license gives all the right to say: That anyone can use anything they find in their personal bag of tricks concerning the metaphorical. That anything an individual writer has gleaned or learned from his or her personal research in the study of all metaphorical forms is open to poetical use. This would permit personal creativity to enter into its unique shape from the far corners of the imagination: both from the known and unknown without a concern for what is or is-not acceptable. That in the most extreme or broadest sense the words of a poem would no longer have to even be liner to be assimilated poetically. I have seen such experimentation, but that might be really stretching the use of metaphor as a structural form to a great extent, but it is interesting to think about.
Why should any writer want to limit themselves when there is so much to be had by not limiting themselves, or by taking a new position other than (for or against) a particular usage of a certain metaphorical form. Let's' enjoy the differences within the poetical by not seeking similarities, but by combining unifying principals into a universal whole. Besides, I'm not sure that the metaphorical and the poetic-form within a piece are not one thing; like bone and flesh, no matter how or in what style the figurative language is presented. We might carve the flesh off the bone to momentarily exam the creature, but I'm not sure we will have a living entity any longer. Or "The Poetical" for that matter unless it is reconstructed in some new way. That poetry's inspiration is integral to the form as the metaphor. And the poetic form is integral to the inspiration as metaphor. Within the creation of a poem, at least for myself, the two seem to happen at the same time. One might proceed the other slightly before the concept is totally constructed, but by the end of a pieces' rough draft the two have come completely together: into agreement collectively. That the inspirational form and the metaphor have become one: in a unity of poetry. (I might add, parenthetically here, this has nothing to do with the fact that a poem might be a complete success or still be, an utter failure or flop.) What I am speaking of here, is just the expansion of figurative thought through the compressed use of metaphorical devices to create a connotative pathway and depth within poetic presentation. More specially the metaphorical use of devices in poetry, the prose poem, and/or poetic prose.
The best metaphor is tied both to a microcosm and a macrocosm of feelings. It carries both an expansion principle as well as a focusing principle within its connotative field. And it is always inclusive not exclusive. That by looking down or looking up we are pulled into its specific actuality as well as unfolded and pushed beyond into an infinite reality. To carry my thought a bit further, here is an excerpt from Lu Chi''s Wen-Fu on poetry, written in 303 A.D., translated by Achilles Fang, which states:
VARIABILITY
As to whether your work should be full or close-fitting, whether you should shape it by gazing down or looking up,
You must accommodate necessary variation, if you would bring out the latent qualities.
When your language is uncouth, your conceits can be clever; when your reasoning is awkward, your words can be supple.
You may follow the well-worn path to attain novelty; you may wade the muddy water to reach the clear stream.
Perspicacity comes after examination; subtlety demands refining.
It is like dancers flinging their sleeves in harmony with the beat, or singers throwing their voices in tune with the chord.
All this is what the wheelwright Pien despaired of explaining; nor can mere language describe it.
The consummate metaphor is not limited in any poetic form of writing. And no individual piece is limited to the use of any one form or type of metaphor. So I say extend your metaphorical horizons for fuller presentation. I dare say, new metaphorical forms might be invented, discovered or rediscover at any time. And that it is up to the writer to keep his eyes open for such possibilities in poetic development collectively; it is for their own expansion as a writer of poetic prose or poetry.
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A Poetic Commentary:
The Double Compound Metaphor And Mr. MacLeish
You know this already, but I'm going to reiterate like talking to a novice about hooks and lines. Let me take you on a fishing trip for the big one that got away. The one you had in the class creel-basket a million times, back when knee-high didn't have a gray beard or a limp with a cane. Poetry lives on suggestion and innuendo; its Metaphors. As the poet in you brings the fire forward toward the fireplace the hearth is cleared away. You are to go and seed the dark depths with your torch. You are the fire giver; don't let the flame go out. Light up the night and dance for the lit-up darkness.
Don't hand a plate of sweet cookies to anyone. Tell it all, by showing them the crumbs not by shoving gingersnap-sermons in their faces. If there are cookies in the other room, point them in the right direction to find the platter, but let them go find the cookies on their own. Besides their cookies aren't the same as your cookies; You like chocolate chip, and they like raisin oatmeal. So let them find their raisin oatmeal, while looking at your chocolate chip. It's that simple.
Screw on your fluorescent socks and take a walk in the state park at night. Tell everyone you're following the footsteps of a saint on his way to the outhouse. Always tear at the useless flab in a poem. But don't tear at it so much you don't have any bone left. And carve a perfect face in the melting ice when everything is too cold to bare. Let your words seep into the depths of the earth that is the reader. Don't splash them with lakes of icy water. The compound mask of two compared metaphors will take your reader deeper into the known and unknown snow than you could possibly ever take anyone within a sermon. Remember even the iceberg has more under than above the surface. Besides the figurative speech of the double compound metaphor is the timeless language. That's what poetry is all about in the snowdrift---Metaphor banked along the barn and fence-line. That's what it does to the strung out wire: the being-ness of being. Chop, Chop, Chop-chop? separating spirit from the body. The intention of the heart from the literal words. It finds the dynamic of the waterless swimmer in the nameless song of birds.
You are getting the bigger picture when the tomato worm says to your red splitting skin: "You are actually starting to get real close to this poem's green guts. Line's dancing in my moth heart, but you're using long twisted phases instead of simple leafy words. The twig phases should become the winding green lines, not the budding metaphors in the line's dense jungle greenness. For the buds need to become the ripened fruit, hanging plump and red, wanting to be picked. Eat the vine away slowly with just a few well chosen words along the lines. Two bites here in a metaphor, and two words there nibbled along the twisted stem. The double compound metaphor is the worm thinking its way into the cocoon of wound silk. One line following the other. Wound around the body this thin thread unwound will take you all the way to mars and back again."
Behold what is below the frozen surface of a dreaming-lake in winter.
I hold up an example on a toothpick; its Archibald's poem. The one olive from the metaphoric martini glass. I am drunk just looking at its red dot of pimento surrounded by green olive envelope. Please notice the sunken treasure in one compound image found in each two lines. You really don't need four to six sail boats to cross the one depth of this ocean. There is a wealth to be had in using the double compound metaphor within any poem. Take a look at these double compounded words placed into paired lines, the poem's 24 lines made into 12 metaphorical couplets, then divided into 3 metaphorical sections of 4 couplets each. And its called "Ars Poetica," by Archibald MacLeish. The sandwich made by Sandwich himself.
Can you fall backward for just a moment into the clouds. That old fish still hooked on your held line; "The Salmon are running." These metaphors are talking about the very thing that they are up stream. It's a mirror before a mirror. A view of the lake from the top and the bottom simultaneously. Reflection back into itself. The same water poured into the rusty bucket from end to beginning. This is sweet liquid profoundness. It is a sock turned inside out over your hand. Looking at its insides, form the outside. This is writing the poetic-well at its best; a constant drink from the dipper, to no end. Taste it's clear infinity. Lick its unseen charred bones hung over the rail in the smoke; Know these filets as well as the placed stones of words. They will snap you when you are not looking; fish tail slap, brittle stick and you will find your lamenting tears in the lost tin cup sitting around the campfire. Here is how his still-water starts; "understand how to close the door behind you." NOW?Just where have you heard that before? And you thought mom wasn't a poet to contend with in the dirty sink of life.
The ground is fresh and muddy here. It is flesh cracking in the sun. Dance with it as a naked lover. Lines of pure magic, pure silver touch, pure inversion, pure conversion; let it ooze under your supple skin. Let its thorn prick your fingertip and then taste your sweet poet blood.
Let the sky melt into your wide eyes, and remove it's silk gown before you. I'm talking the lover's inner landscape here as cut cloth for a dress. See how the pattern shifts for the seams that are sewn so tightly together. Not the external ones; but the internal comprehension of the scissors crossing thousands of snipped threads. Go for the buried sap of consciousness beneath the printed tree bark upon the fabric. Not the rough exterior of meaning, but the blood bite in feeling where the tick has bored into your hide beneath the worn costume. The center of your heart is liquid like silvery mercury in this toxic dreaming.
Archibald does it all right here, And very simply and very magically composed with the double compound metaphors strung on his needle like beads of wisdom. The structure of this poem is a lesson in every way. He starts with 4 metaphorical couplets devoted to the senses with each one containing some sort of silence, He moves to the mirror of the full moon and reflects your image back to you as the man in the moon, and then lastly, tells you the didactic in such a skilled way that it is just totally uncalled for. A position against every cubed grain of salt you've ever been taught by the tailor or the cook when crafting poetry. This is just how it is at wedding feasts: transparent silk and lots of music. The perfect wedding dress! It is all invisible ribbons and immaculate lace waiting for the bridegroom. And he gets away with it every time you reread the darn thing.
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Ars Poetica
(by Archibald MacLeish)
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown?
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
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A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind?
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
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A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea?
A poem should not mean
But be.
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Hey inject this poem by Archibald's into your Lorca-ground-glass flowing blood stream while singing the word "Duende" over and over again. Then you'll know what I mean by "Dance with it!" at the reception. I'm saying you better kiss the bride, here. Dance with any closure as a lover. Dance with the double compound metaphor as silk upon the innocent body. It is all right hear; a fine piece of good news for every poet to feed upon. Free to all for the taking. But can you see through its clear class and still capture the whole picture window. So "Dance with it!" Dance with your own closing door. He sets you up for his abstracts with concretes; and you come out of his poem feeling he's bent your head without you knowing. That he's bent you before you saw the poem. He bent you when you were not looking, when you wandered into the chapel like a lost seaman with an albatross around your neck. That's how the abstract ending needs to work within a poem when its done right. I hope I didn't come across as too preachy in my pajamas. I am just trying to tell the old sea tale like it is. The turtle is still in its shell. Maybe how I see the thick closure and the muscular double compound metaphor working inside the depth of a poems ocean. There are many different ways to end a piece with a good closure. But they are all the gymnast at his or her best dismounting from the bars of the metaphorical spin in transparent space. Full twist and turning sky, then landing square on the mark. If you get my flying drift. So, whatever you do; keep up the good writing. And know part of it has to be fun behind all that work, or you need to stop doing it. So smile a little, cry a little, and laugh a whole lot, so the bears don't have all the fun at the state park. So if the saint's shoes fit. Wear them home in style.
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A poet friend
R. H. Peat
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At this point I would like to list some of the more common metaphorical devices. For many it will be a new reference list; for others it will be a review. Use it how you will for the betterment of your individual metaphorical writing.
A Short Glossary Of Metaphorical Devices:
So what are some of the the more commonly used metaphorical devices in literature? I will attempt to list a few of these devices here. These definitions are in a form related to the conceit under the term of Figurative Speech or Figures of Speech, which is commonly used in reference books of various kinds.
Besides the more obvious metaphorical devices, which are: the simile, and the simple metaphor of analogy, along with the use of ambiguity, the paradoxical, the oxymoron, and the power of suggestion--including exaggeration and distortion, all of which will be named and defined here to some extent; we may also enter into the more complex structures called the conceit, antithesis, the allegorical, the epic simile and other more diverse forms ? the extended forms of metaphor.
Allegory:
1.a. A literary, dramatic, or pictorial device in which characters and events stand for abstract ideas, principles, or forces, so that the literal sense has or suggests a parallel, deeper symbolic sense. b. A story, picture, or play in which this device is used. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
2. A symbolic representation.
An allegory undertakes to make a doctrine or thesis interesting and persuasive by converting it into a narrative in which the agents, and sometimes the setting as well, represent general concepts, moral qualities, or other abstractions. I will mention the (fable and the parable) here as well but their forms differ slightly. But are other possibilities for expanded metaphorical use. An allegory is an extended metaphor that has an apparent meaning, but a more significant one remains to be disclosed. An allegory is common in poetic prose, as well as in various types of poetry. A wide background in literature, myth, history, and various religions is often required to recognize many allegorical passages.
Ambiguity
1. Open to more than one interpretation.
2. Doubtful or uncertain.
3. William Empson's 7 types of poetic ambiguity
1. When a detail is effective in several ways at once
2. When two or more alternative meanings are fully resolved into one
3. When two apparently unconnected meanings are given simultaneously
4. When the alternative meanings combine to make clear a complicated state of
mind in the author
5. A fortunate confusion, As when the author is discovering his idea in the act of
writing?or not holding it all in mind at once
6. When what is said is contradictory or irrelevant and the reader is forced to
invent interpretations
7. One of full contradiction, marking a division in the author?'s mind
4. The equivocal senses; That which sustains intricacy, intimacy, delicacy and
compression of thought and vision
Analogy :
1.a. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
b. A comparison based on such similarity.
Antithesis:
1. Direct contrast; opposition.
2. The direct or exact opposite.
3.a. A figure of speech in which sharply contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in a balanced or parallel phrase or grammatical structure, as in.
b. The second and contrasting part of such a juxtaposition.
4. The second stage of the Hegelian dialectic process, representing the opposite of the thesis.
The ancient Chinese primarily used this metaphorical form exclusively called antithesis in their regulated form. Two short diametric or opposing lines that are parallel in structure. Antithesis is a figure of speech in which sharply contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in balanced or parallel phrases or a grammatical structure. A short explanation below:
Chinese is a uni-syllabic language, and there is a natural tendency in Chinese towards antithesis. For instance, instead of saying ?size?, one says ?big-smallness? and instead of ?landscape? one says ?mountain-waters?. Such expressions reveal a dualistic and relativistic way of thinking. Moreover monosyllabic words and disyllabic compounds, which constitute the bulk of the language, lend themselves easily to antithesis. For example "river" and "mountain" form an antithesis; so do ?flower? and ?bird?. These two antithetical pairs can then be used to form another antithesis: ?River and mountain? in contrast to ?flower and bird?. It is easy to form a tetrasyllabic phrase with two antithetical disyllabic compounds: "red flower and green leaves", "blue sky and white sun". Such being the case with the language itself, it is inevitable that antithesis should play an important part in Chinese poetry, and be metaphorical in content.
In regulated Verse, antithesis is demanded by the verification. The four middle lines of an eight-line poem in Regulated Verse should form two antithetical couplets, each syllable in the fist line should contrast in tone with the corresponding syllable in the next line. At the same time, the contrasted words should be of the same grammatical category: noun against noun, verb against verb, etc. This is not always strictly observed, especially among earlier writers of Regulated Verse. i.e., Tu Fu's (Cicada's cries gather in the ancient temple, A bird's shadow crosses the cold pond.) A Statement On Chinese Poetry?Taken from the art of Chinese poetry by James J. Y. Liu
Apostrophe:
The direct address of an absent or imaginary person or of a personified abstraction, especially as a digression in the course of a speech or composition.
is a sudden shift to direct address, either to an absent person or to an abstract or inanimate entity. If this address is to a god or muse to assist the poet in his composition, it is called an Invocation. Also a Rhetorical Question is a question asked, not to evoke a reply, but to achieve a rhetorical emphasis stronger than a direct statement.
Chiasmus:
is the use of phrases which are syntactically parallel but with their elements reversed, as in these lines from Pope, in which the first the verb first precedes, and then follows, the adverbial phrase:
Works without show, and without pomp presides.
or
A fop their passion, but their prize a sot.
The Conceit:
An elaborate or exaggerated comparison ? (metaphor.) An ingenious image, sometimes fancifully elaborated to the point of absurdity, And beyond this a conceit is just an extended metaphor of several various kinds that generally tends to be witty or intellectual in its demeanor but is not limited to these two types of presentations. It is a rather broad term in that sense. Covering every kind of extended form from simile and metaphor to paradox and metonymy. But it is always and extended and elaborate presentation beyond just a simple metaphor. The metaphysical conceit was more intellectualized, many-leveled comparison giving a strong sense of the poet's ingenuity in overcoming obstacles.
An extended, fanciful comparison between two apparently dissimilar objects. In "Huswifery," Edward Taylor compares himself to a spinning wheel upon which God weaves.
from (A Glossary of Literary Terms) By M. H. Abrams
Originally meaning simply an idea or image, "conceit" has come to be applied to a figure of speech which establishes a striking parallel--usually an elaborate parallel-- between two apparently dissimilar things or situations
1. see (Simile and Metaphor) The term was once derogatory, but it is now best employed as a neutral way of identifying a literary device. Two species of conceits are often distinguished. Petrarchan conceits are a type of figure used in love poems, which had been novel enough in their original employment by the Italian poet Petrarch but tended to become conventional and hackneyed in his imitators, the Elizabethan sonneteers. They consisted of elaborate and hyperbolic comparisons applied to the disdainful mistress, as cruel as she was beautiful, and to the distresses of the worshipful lover
2. see (Hyperbole) In one sonnet, for example, Sir Thomas Wyatt circumstantially compares the lover's state to a ship laboring in a storm, and in another he parallels it in detail to the landscape of the Alps. A third sonnet begins with one of the most familiar of Petrarchan conceits, describing the fever and chills of the alternately hopeful and despairing lover:
3. see (Oxymoron)
I find no peace; and all my war is done;
I fear and hope; I burn, and freeze in ice.
Shakespeare smiled at some of the standard objects pressed into service by Petrarchan writers to describe a lady's beauty, in his sonnet beginning:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
The metaphysical conceit is a characteristic kind of figure in the poems of John Donne and his followers. 4. see (Metaphysical Poets) It was described by Dr. Johnson, in a famous passage, as "a kind of discordia concurs, a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblance in things apparently unlike." The metaphysical poets exploited all knowledge--commonplace or esoteric, practical or philosophical, true or fabulous--for these figures; and their comparisons were usually novel, witty, and at their best, (startlingly successful). In sharp contrast to conventional Petrarchism, for example, is Done's "the canonization," with its extraordinarily inventive sequence of comparisons for the situation of two lovers, moving, as the poetic argument develops, from the area of commerce and business through various real and mythical birds and diverse forms of historical memorials, to a climax which triumphantly equates the acts and status of physical lovers with the ascetic life and heavenly destination of unworldly saints. The most famous sustained conceit is Done's comparison of the continuing unity of his soul with his lady's, in spite of their physical parting, to the action of a draughts man's compass. The passage is in "A valediction Forbidding Mourning," and begins:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth if the other do . . . .
Equally well known, but this time as an instance of the grotesque and chilly ingenuity of the unsuccessful metaphysical conceit, is Richard Crashaw's description, in "Saint Mary Magdalene," of the tearful eyes of the repentant Mary Magdalene as
:two faithful fountains
Two waling baths, two weeping motions,
Portable and compendious oceans.
More On The Conceit:
Another note on the extended metaphor of the conceit. This excerpt from another source: (The Many Worlds of Poetry).
When the extended simile or metaphor becomes quite elaborated in a witty or intellectual way, it is called a conceit. At a high level of intensity, a metaphor goes beyond comparison and succeeds in creating an aura of transformation. An example of this is the following passage from Romeo and Juliet. Romeo, standing unseen for the moment beneath Juliet's window, has been smitten by the beauty of her eyes. The comparison of the lady's eyes to stars was an old one even in Shakespeare's day, but what happens in these lines goes beyond the ordinary smile or metaphor:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight cloth a lamp: her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
(II, ii)
The passage has some of the elaborateness of a conceit, but the main element here is not wit or intellect, as in a conceit, but passion. The imagination is made to leap across the gap between the image of eyes and the image of stars in such a way that a new entity come into being: the eyes as stars. The line in which the transformation culminates is "would through the airy region stream so bright," It is with language of such energy and radiance that the poet's "Imagination bodies forth/ The forms of thing unknown."
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven:
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
(Midsummer Night's Dream: V, i)
Connotation vs denotation
Any meaning suggested by the sound or the look of a word or associated, however remotely, with its usual specific meaning. The connotations of language thicken its ambiguities and also give it great emotional weight, so that they may enrich its value for the poet. Denotation is the accepted meaning of a word. See also ambiguity, symbol and verbal texture.
Coupling:
1. The act of forming couples.
2. A device that links or connects.
3. Two items of the same kind; a pair.
4. Something that joins or connects two things together; a link.
Fantasy:
1. The creative imagination; unrestrained fancy.
2. Something, such as an invention, that is a creation of the fancy.
3. A capricious or fantastic idea; a conceit.
4.a. Fiction characterized by highly fanciful or supernatural elements.
b. An example of such fiction.
5. An imagined event or sequence of mental images, such as a daydream, usually fulfilling a wish or psychological need.
6. Music. See fantasia.
7. A coin issued especially by a questionable authority and not intended for use as currency.
8. Obsolete. A hallucination. To imagine; visualize.
Figures of Thought or Speech:
That in which the the departure from the standard is primarily in the arrangement or rhetorical function of the words, without radical change in their literal meaning. i.e. a zeugma
Hyperbole:
A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton. Hyperbole is an extravagant exaggeration of fact, used either for serious or comic effect: "Her eyes opened wide as saucers." for more poetic examples, see Marvell's description of his "vegetable love" in "To His Coy Mistress," or Ben Jonson's compliments to his lady in "Drink to me only with thine eyes." the "tall tale" and "tall talk" of the American Southwest is a form of comic hyperbole. There was the cowboy in an Eastern restaurant who ordered a steak well done. "do you call this well done?" he roared at the waitress. "I've seen critters hurt worse than that get well!"
Imagery:
1. A set of mental pictures or images.
2.a. The use of vivid or figurative language to represent objects, actions, or ideas. b. The use of expressive or evocative images in art, literature, or music. c. A group or body of related images, as in a painting or poem.
3.a. Representative images, particularly statues or icons. b. The art of making such images.
This term is one of the most common in modern criticism. Its application range all the way from "mental pictures" to the total meaning presented by a poem: C. Day Lewis, for example has said that a poem is "an image composed from a multiplicity of images." The term is used to signify descriptive passages in poetry, especially if the descriptions are vivid and particularized. It should not be taken to imply a visual reproduction of the scene described; the description may be of any sensations, not only visual ones. The term is also used to signify figurative language, especially metaphors and similes, in this sense, it is a clue to poetic meaning, structure, and effect.
Imagination:
1.a. The formation of a mental image of something that is neither perceived as real nor present to the senses. b. The mental image so formed. c. The ability or tendency to form such images.
2. The ability to confront and deal with reality by using the creative power of the mind; resourcefulness.
Irony:
1.a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.
2.a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.
b. An occurrence, a result, or a circumstance notable for such incongruity.
3. Dramatic irony.
4. Socratic irony.
"Rhetorical" or "verbal irony" is a mode of speech in which the implied attitudes or evaluation are opposed to those literally expressed
Kenning:
1. Perception; understanding.
2.a. Range of vision.
b. View; sight.
3. To know (a person or thing).
4. To recognize.
To have knowledge or an understanding of. A figurative stock phrase used in Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry, such as "The whale-road" for the sea. It has it equivalent in the stock epithet: "The wine-dark sea", "ox-eyed Hera", and the like: of the Greek epics, with which translation has made us more familiar.
Metaphor:
1. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles".
2. One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol.
A word which in ordinary usage signifies one kind of thing, quality, or action is applied to another, without express indication of a relation between them. For example, if Burns had chosen to say "O my love is a red, red rose" he would have used, technically, a metaphor instead of a simile. Here is a more complex metaphor, from Stephen Spender:
Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,
Drinker of horizon's fluid line
Metaphysical Poets:
Dryden said in 1693 that John Donne in his poetry " affects the metaphysics" -- i.e., employs the terms and abstruse arguments of the Scholastic philosophers -- and in 1779 Dr. Johnson extended the term "metaphysical" from Donne to a school of poets, in the acute and balanced critique he incorporated in his "Life of Cowley." The term is now applied to a group of seventeenth-century poets who show signs of influence by Done's practice, both in secular poetry (Cleveland, Marvell, Cowley) and in religious poetry (Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw).
Attempts have been made to demonstrate that the metaphysical poets held a philosophical world-view in common, but the term "metaphysical" fits these very diverse writers only if it is used as Johnson used it, to indicate merely a common poetic style and manner of thought. Donne set the pattern by writing poems which are expressed in a diction and rhythm modeled on the rough give and take of actual speech, which are often organized in the dramatic form of an argument--with his mistress, or an intruding friend, or God, or internally with himself--and which are persistently "witty" in their use of paradox, pun and startling parallels and distinctions. These poets have had some admirers in every age, but they were generally regarded as interesting eccentrics until an astonishing revaluation after World War I elevated Donne to a position near Shakespeare. The movement began with H. J. C. Grierson''s Introduction to Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century (1912), was given strong impetus by T. S. Eliot's essay on "The metaphysical Poets" and "Andrew Marvell" (1921), and has been continued by a host of scholars and writers, including the New Critics. Refer to George Williamson, The Donne Tradition (1930), and R.C. Bald, Done's Influence in English Literature (1932)
Metonymy:
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government or of the sword for military power. ?
Two related classes of metaphor, which create an equation or identity between a part of a thing and the whole of between two things connected in some way are synecdoche and metonymy (See synecdoche below),
The use of the name of one thing for that of another is called metonymy, as in saying "the bottle" for "strong drink," or in referring to "the crown" when "the king" is meant.
Overstate or Overstatement:
To state in exaggerated terms. overstatement
Oxymoron: If the paradoxical statement combines two terms that in ordinary usage are contraries, it is sometimes distinguished as an Oxymoron; for example Tennyson's
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Petrarchan sonneteers were fond of the oxymoron in phrases like "Pleasing pain," "I burn and freeze," "loving hate," and so on. Donne exploited the paradox beyond all poets, and some of his poems are paradoxical in the over-all structure as well as in the component statements. "The canonization," for example, is a long proof, full of local paradoxes, of the paradoxical thesis that profane lovers are saints.
Paradox:
1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true.
2. One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects.
3. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
4. A statement contrary to received opinion.
A paradox is a statement that seems absurd or self-contradictory, but which turns out to have a tenable and coherent meaning, as in the conclusion to Done's sonnet of death:
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Parallelism:
1. The quality or condition of being parallel; a parallel relationship.
2. Likeness, correspondence, or similarity in aspect, course, or tendency.
3. Grammar. The use of identical or equivalent syntactic constructions in corresponding clauses.
4. Philosophy. The doctrine that to every mental change there corresponds a concomitant but causally unconnected physical alteration.
Personification:
1. The act of personifying.
2. A person or thing typifying a certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification.
3. A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form, as in Hunger sat shivering on the road or Flowers danced about the lawn. Also called prosopopeia.
4. Artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.
Personification is that form of metaphor which treats an object or abstraction as if it were a person. Emily Dickinson transforms death into a courtly gentleman:
Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The carriage held but just ourselves--
And Immortality.
In his poem "The Snowstorm," Emerson speaks of the north wind as a mad architect who builds a fantastic world out of snow:
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion . . . .
The Pun:
is a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings, or it is the use of a single word or phrase with two incongruous meanings, both relevant. Puns have had serious as well as humorous uses. An example of the latter type, also know as an equivoque, is the epitaph on a bank tell:
He checked his cash, cashed in his checks,
And left his window. Who is next?
Representation:
1. The act of representing or the state of being represented.
2. Something that represents.
3.a. An account or a statement, as of facts, allegations, or arguments.
b. An expostulation; a protest.
4. A presentation or production, as of a play.
Simile:
A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life" (Shakespeare).
a comparison between two essentially different items is expressly indicated by a term such as "like" or "as" a simple example is Burns' "O my love's like a red, red rose."
Superlative
1. Something of the highest possible excellence.
2. The highest degree; the acme.
3. a. The superlative degree.
b. An adjective or adverb expressing the superlative degree, as in brightest, the superlative of the adjective bright, or most brightly, the superlative of the adverb brightly.
Symbol:
1. Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.
2. A printed or written sign used to represent an operation, an element, a quantity, a quality, or a relation, as in mathematics or music.
A symbol represents or stands for something else. The cross, for example, is a symbol of Christianity. Just as is the case with allegory, in order to recognize some symbols in poetry, you must be widely read in literature, religion, history, and myth. With the advent of the psychological theories of Freud and Jung, a wide-ranging tendency to use obscure personal symbols emerged among poets and other artists, adding a great deal of richness, but substantially complicating interpretation.
Synecdoche:
synecdoche uses the part for the whole, as in the famous lines of Christopher Marlowe about Helen of Troy:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?
The term synecdoche may also be applied to the use of a special case in a generalized way, as a rich man is called a Rockefeller,
The Tropes or "Turns:"
Tropes meaning "turns" in which words are used with a decided change or extension in their otherwise literal meaning.
Understate:
1. To state with less completeness or truth than seems warranted by the facts.
2. To express with restraint or lack of emphasis, especially ironically or for rhetorical effect.
3. To state (a quantity, for example) that is too low.
To give an understatement.
Understatement:
1. A disclosure or statement that is less than complete.
2. Restraint or lack of emphasis in expression, as for rhetorical effect.
3. Restraint in artistic expression.
Zeugma:
In Greek means "Yoking" and applies to the use of a single word standing in the same grammatical relation to two other terms. A figure of speech in which one word, usually a verb, is used to modify two or more others, but making sense with only one, as in "the fragrance of flowers and the sky..."
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