In this, your final poetry composition, you will be required to apply figurative language to create a free verse poem of at least eight lines. Study the figurative language terms below and incorporate a combination of these tools in your verse. As with the other two composed poems, write a summary explaining your incorporation of the figurative tools.
Figurative language is a category of several different types of poetic devices. It is any group of words or phrases — even the entire poem — that is not meant to be read or interpreted literally. Figurative language is language which uses figurative devices such as metaphors, similes and personification. Literally, the word “figurative” means giving a shape to a word, or seeing it in the form of a figure. To give an unusual or interesting shape to a thought means employing figurative language. For instance, a rose as a symbol of love or the Grim Reaper as a symbol of death (also an example of personification). Figurative language makes writing and reading more imaginative.
The word “metaphor” comes from the Greek word metapherin, which literally means “to transfer.” Many English words have both literal and metaphorical or figurative meanings. The literal meaning of a word is its most widely used sense. The metaphorical meaning is figurative – it expresses an idea by referring to something else in a non-literal way. Metaphors help us to express our understanding of the world around us. They add colour, vivid imagery and perhaps emotion to a sentence. How is guilt like a stain? How is friendship like a raft? How is an equation like a tug of war? Research shows that asking students to make connections and comparisons between items that are not truly similar is one of the most effective ways to improve comprehension and foster gains in achievement. We call these kinds of comparisons metaphors and similes, and they represent one of our most colorful, creative, and enlightening forms of expression. Teachers, poets, songwriters, all of us rely on metaphors and similes to intensify what we mean or make dazzling connections between things we never before thought could go together.
The poetry terms that are referred to throughout these lessons will be emphasized on the final exam.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE TERMS:
Allusion: A reference to something in history or literature. I.e. She had a Cinderella wedding.
Hyperbole (or overstatement) : An extreme exaggeration used for effect. I.e. I’ve told you a hundred times…; I’m starving; The suspense is killing me.
Metaphor: An implied comparison between unlike things. I.e. He’s a house.
Onomatopoeia: “Sound words”; Words whose sound suggests their meaning. I.e. buzz, click, snap, chop.
Oxymoron: The setting together, for effect, two words of opposite meaning. I.e. burning cold, screaming whisper.
Paradox: An apparent contradiction, which is nevertheless somehow true.
Personification: Giving human characteristics to an animal, object, or idea. I.e. The hours crawled by like years.
Simile: A comparison between two unlike things using words such as: like, as, than, similar to, resembles, etc. I.e. Quiet as a mouse
Litotes: a form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite.
Pun: A play on words, either on different senses of the same word or on the similar sense or sound of different words. Known in rhetoric as paronomasia. A pun is a play on words in which a humorous effect is produced by using a word that suggests two or more meanings or by exploiting similar sounding words having different meanings.
Humorous effects created by puns depend upon the ambiguities words entail. The ambiguities arise mostly in homophones and homonyms. For instance, in a sentence “A happy life depends on a liver”, liver can refer to the organ liver or simply the person who lives. Similarly, in a famous saying “Atheism is a non-prophet institution” the word “prophet” is used instead of “profit” to produce a humorous effect.
In constructing puns, William Shakespeare was a master craftsman. We find many examples of puns in his plays. Let us have a look at some of them:
- “It is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied.”(Richard III)
- “winter of our discontent…made glorious summer by this Son of York.”(Richard III)
- Romeo: “Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead” (Romeo and Juliet)
- Claudius: “…But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son…” Hamlet: [aside] “A little more than kin, and less than kind. (Kindred)” (Hamlet)
Metonymy: Using a physical object to indicate a larger idea is named metonymy. For instance, the word “crown” can refer to a king or a monarchical system, or even an entire royal family. Journalists often refer to the United States government as “Washington,” as in “We’ll wait to see how Washington responds to this recent change in developments.”
Symbol: Roughly defined as something that means more than what it is. I.e. A wedding ring is a symbol of commitment, love, honor, etc. It is not just a ring. It’s shape (a circle) is also symbolic; a circle never ends and therefore the love is not supposed to.
Enjambment: is when the writer uses line breaks meaningfully and abruptly to either emphasize a point or to create dual meanings. When a poem is read, the reader will conventionally make a slight pause (shorter than a comma) when transitioning from line to line. When a writer uses enjambment, he or she uses this space to spread an idea over more than one line, either creating an alternate interpretation of the lines or drawing attention to the enjambed words.
Rolling through the field in the
dead
of winter.
When the word “dead” is placed on a line in isolation, it invites the reader to focus on that idea. Surrounded by empty space, the idea may resonate powerfully. Though enjambment could be used during a speech, the term “enjambment” is generally applied to the study of poetry.
Imagery: Imagery is when the writer or speaker uses their descriptions to access the senses of the reader of listener. Sometimes this is called, using sensory details. When I say “senses” or “sensory,” I am referring to the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.
An old lump of snow melted in the corner.
The chirping crickets filled the empty night air.
I was awoken by the pleasing scent of the bacon as it wafted down the hallway.
As you read the first example, you might visualize snow melting, because the description accesses your sense of sight. When you read the second example, you may imagine the noises that crickets produce, as the imagery in the text references this sound. And as you encounter the third example, you may recall the aroma of bacon based on the imagery in the sentence. Good writers don’t just tell you things, they show you things by using imagery.
Examples of Figurative Poems
Bright Star by John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.
The Touch by Anne Sexton
For months my hand was sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she knew not of.
The hand had collapse,
a small wood pigeon
that had gone into seclusion.
I turned it over and the palm was old,
its lines traced like fine needlepoint
and stitched up into fingers.
It was fat and soft and blind in places.
Nothing but vulnerable.
And all this is metaphor.
An ordinary hand — just lonely
for something to touch
that touches back.
The dog won’t do it.
Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog.
I’m no better than a case of dog food.
She owns her own hunger.
My sisters won’t do it.
They live in school except for buttons
and tears running down like lemonade.
My father won’t do it.
He comes in the house and even at night
he lives in a machine made by my mother
and well oiled by his job, his job.
The trouble is
that I’d let my gestures freeze.
The trouble was not
in the kitchen or the tulips
but only in my head, my head.
Then all this became history.
Your hand found mine.
Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot.
Oh, my carpenter,
the fingers are rebuilt.
They dance with yours.
They dance in the attic and in Vienna.
My hand is alive all over America.
Not even death will stop it,
death shedding her blood.
Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom
and the kingdom come.
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine
A noiseless, patient spider by Walt Whitman
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.