Figurative LanguageCool as a Cucumber

I love poetry!

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Figurative LanguageFigurative language is the use of words outside their literal or usual meaning to add beauty or force.

A figure of speech may be said to occur whenever a speaker or writer, for the sake of freshness or emphasis, departs from the usual denotations of words.

It is characterized by the use of similes and metaphors

Literal language vs. figurative language

• Literal language is meaning exactly what you say: “Go jump in a lake!”

• Figurative language is saying one thing and meaning another: “Go jump in a lake!”

• Poetry relies heavily on figurative language.

Personification

SimileImagery

Aural imagery• alliteration•Assonance

•Onomatopoeia

Metaphor

Symbol

Imagery

Personification

Simile

Aural imagery• alliteration•Assonance

•Onomatopoeia

Metaphor

Symbol

Simile- comparison using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’

Examples

“It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog.”

- The Beatles “My heart is like an open highway.”

- Jon Bon Jovi

A simile expresses a similarity. Still, for a simile to exist, the things compared have to be dissimilar in kind. It is no simile to say, “Your fingers are like mine,” it is a literal observation. But to say, “Your fingers are like sausages” is to use a simile. Omit the connective– say, “Your fingers are sausages” – and the result is a metaphor, a statement where one thing is spoken of as though it were something else, which, in a literal sense, it is not.

Simile

“Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherized upon a table;”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S.Eliot

Your Turn

As black as...As light as a... As clean as a... As hungry as a... As proud as a... As heavy as...

Be creative in your choice of comparison

Similes As black as... Coal As light as a... Feather As clean as a... Whistle As quick as a... Flash As hungry as a... Wolf As proud as a... Peacock As sharp as a... Needle As heavy as... Lead Like a bull in a.. China shop

Being stood up is like being the last fruit on the tree, left to wither through the winter

Feeling angry is like carrying a volcano in the pit of your stomach that threatens to erupt at any moment

The leaves fell from the tree like a thousand paratroopers leaping into battle behind enemy lines

A Simile Poem

By Stanley Cook

Like the white curls from a gigantic beard Drifting across the barber’s shop floor In the breeze from the open door; Like the broken parts of the ice flow Afloat on the blue of the ocean, Drifting southward from the Pole; Like a heavily laden treasure fleet In a light wind on the calm sea, Hardly moving with all sails set; Like suds of foam from the waterfall That lathers the rocks at its foot, Gliding over a tranquil pool; Like wool from a fleece, Like smoke from a fire, Like islands in the sky.

Like the white curls from a gigantic beard Drifting across the barber’s shop floor In the breeze from the open door; Like the broken parts of the ice flow Afloat on the blue of the ocean, Drifting southward from the Pole; Like a heavily laden treasure fleet In a light wind on the calm sea, Hardly moving with all sails set; Like suds of foam from the waterfall That lathers the rocks at its foot, Gliding over a tranquil pool; Like wool from a fleece, Like smoke from a fire, Like islands in the sky.

Similes in Rap• "My rhymes are like shot clocks,

interstate cops and blood clots,my point is your flow gets stopped."- Talib Kweli on "Hater Players," Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Blackstar

• "Throwing out the wicked like God did the devil,funky like your grandpa's drawers, don't test me,we're in like that, you're dead like Presley."- Q-Tip on "Steve Biko," Midnight Marauders

"Me without a mic is like a beat without a snare...I'm sweet like licorice, dangerous like syphilis."- Lauryn Hill on "How Many Mics," The Score

"Coming from the deep black like the Loch Ness,now bring apocalypse like the Heart of Darkness."- Talib Kweli on "We Got the Beat," The Beautiful Struggle

"You stopping us is preposterouslike an androgynous misogynist,you picking the wrong time, stepping to me when I'm in my prime like Optimus, Transforming..."- Talib Kweli on "Twice Inna Lifetime," Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Blackstar

Your Turn—Use a simile to

describe the following

M.S. MerwinSeparationYour absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Underline the simile and explain its meaning.

Name the Title - D.H. Lawrence

Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light, and falling back

Wings like bits of UmbrellaHanging upside down like rows of

disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleepSwallows with spools of dark thread

sewing the shadows together

BATS

“ Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”• Muhammad Ali

Your turn-Portfolio Poem #2Write a poem between12-15 lines that uses two similes. You may write on any theme but here is a suggestion.Consider the phrase “love is like. . .” Think about the love is like to you, and write a poem comparing love to an object, experience—anything you want.

Her skin is as fair as porcelain.Her eyes are piercing daggers.Her lips are plump and luscious.Her feet are sailboats taking her around the world.Her brain is a melting pot full of different images.Her body is a temple preserved and beautiful.-Katie

Imagery

Personification

Simile

Metaphor

SymbolAural imagery• alliteration•Assonance

•Onomatopoeia

Metaphor – direct comparison without using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’

Metaphor

“The greater part of untested men appeared quiet and absorbed. They were going to look at the war, the red animal- the blood-swollen god.”

The Red Badge of Courage-

Stephen Crane

MY LIFE IS A DREAM

My life is a dream,like a tiger wakingup from her deep sleep.My life is like a dream,it's all up to me.

Explain this metaphor

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely

players.”Shakespeare -- As You Like It

What season are you?

What animal are you?

Musical Instrument?

Piece of Furniture?

How is a wave like a mountain?

Use a metaphor to describe this wave

• Hokusai – ‘The Wave’

You know a dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows. And a dreamer's just a vessel that must follow where it goes. Trying to learn from what's behind you and never knowing what's in storemakes each day a constant battle just to stay between the shores. 

        And I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry.        Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky.        I'll never reach my destination if I never try,        So I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry.

Too many times we stand aside and let the water slip away.To what we put off 'til tomorrow has now become today.So don't you sit upon the shore and say you're satisfied.Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tides

        -Chorus-

There's bound to be rough waters, and I know I'll take some falls(understood challenges).With the good Lord as my captain, I can make it through them all.

( understood God guides him in reaching his dream just like a captain guides a vessel)

        -Chorus-

The RiverYou know a dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows. And a dreamer's just a vessel that must follow where it goes. Trying to learn from what's behind you and never knowing what's in storemakes each day a constant battle just to stay between the shores. 

        And I will sail my vessel (understood – live my dream) 'til the river runs dry.        Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky.        I'll never reach my destination if I never try,        So I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry.

Too many times we stand aside and let the water slip away.To what we put off 'til tomorrow has now become today(understood—we procrastinate.So don't you sit upon the shore (understood – be a bystander) and say you're satisfied.Choose to chance the rapids (understood - taking chances) and dare to dance the tides (understood – live life).

        -Chorus-

There's bound to be rough waters, and I know I'll take some falls(understood challenges).With the good Lord as my captain, I can make it through them all.

( understood God guides him in reaching his dream just like a captain guides a vessel)

        -Chorus-

The Rose by Bette Middler

• Underline the metaphors

Some say love, it is a riverthat drowns the tender reed.Some say love, it is a razorthat leaves your soul to bleed.Some say love, it is a hunger,an endless aching need.I say love, it is a flower,and you its only seed.

It's the heart afraid of breakingthat never learns to dance.It's the dream afraid of wakingthat never takes the chance.It's the one who won't be taken,who cannot seem to give,and the soul afraid of dyin'that never learns to live. When the night has been too lonelyand the road has been too long (understood – life has been hard),and you think that love is onlyfor the lucky and the strong,just remember in the winterfar beneath the bitter snowslies the seed that with the sun's lovein the spring becomes the rose (understood – rose is love).

Some say love, it is a riverthat drowns the tender reed.Some say love, it is a razorthat leaves your soul to bleed.Some say love, it is a hunger,an endless aching need.I say love, it is a flower,and you its only seed.

It's the heart afraid of breakingthat never learns to dance.It's the dream afraid of wakingthat never takes the chance.It's the one who won't be taken,who cannot seem to give,and the soul afraid of dyin'that never learns to live. When the night has been too lonelyand the road has been too long (understood – life has been hard),and you think that love is onlyfor the lucky and the strong,just remember in the winterfar beneath the bitter snowslies the seed that with the sun's lovein the spring becomes the rose (understood – rose is love).

Norm Nicholson

And chiselled clear on stone, A spider-web of shell,The thumbprint of the sea

May Swenson

On silent hingesOpen-folds her wingsApplauding hands

Phoebe Hesketh

Giraffe-talk, gormless somehowHeads hangingOver the next garden

Gareth Owen

Boredom Is cloudsBlack as old slateChucking rain straightOn our Housing Estate

All grey Day long.

Metaphor for a Family My family lives inside a medicine chest:

Dad is the super-size band aid, strong and powerful but not always effective in a crisis.Mom is the middle-size tweezers,which picks and pokes and pinches.David is the single small aspirin on the third shelf,sometimes ignored.Muffin, the sheep dog, is a round cotton ball, stained and dirty, that pops off the shelf and bounces in my way as I open the door.And I am the wood and glue which hold us all together with my love.

By: Belinda

Fifth of July My family is an expired firecrackerset off by the blowtorch of divorce. We lay scattered in many directions.My father is the wick, badly burnt but still glowing softly.My mother is the blackened paper fluttering down,blowing this way and that, unsure where to land.My sister is the fallen, colorful parachute,lying in a tangled knot, unable to see the beauty sheholds.My brother is the fresh, untouched powder thatwas protected from the flame. And I,I am the singed, outside papers, curled awayfrom everything, silently cursing the blowtorch.

Your turn—Portfolio Poem #3Write a poem about your family describing the members using metaphors. Your poem should be an extended metaphor My family is a (your metaphor)My father is (metaphor)My mother is (metaphor)

I am (metaphor)You get the idea

Similes and Metaphors

• Oh, my love is like a red, red rose OR My lover’s cheeks are like red roses

• My lover’s cheeks are red rosesOR

Oh, my love is a red, red rose.

Simile or Metaphor? ? ?

1. My thoughts no longer hover. . . Resting their wings.

2. Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer, Drinker of horizon’s fluid line.

3. Boy, you are a wrecking ball, crashing into me.4. I will speak daggers to her.5. The pen is mightier than the sword.6. Her smile is like a ray of sunshine7. O thy love’s like a red, red rose

Answers

1. My thoughts no longer hover. . . Resting their wings--Metaphor

2. Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer, Drinker of horizon’s fluid line--Metaphor

3. Boy, you are a wrecking ball, crashing into me--Metaphor

4. I will speak daggers to her --Metaphor5. The pen is mightier than the sword--Metaphor6. Her smile is like a ray of sunshine—Simile7. O thy love’s like a red, red rose--Simile

Your TurnUse a metaphor to describe one of the following

as a phrase or line.

• London Underground• Boots• A rhinoceros • A hive of bees • Fog

Color Poem for Portfolio # 4

Color poems use your imagination and senses to investigate a subject. The focus of the poem is on using similes and metaphors. Similes compare two unlike things using with words “like” or “as.” For example: "The lake is like a whirlpool." Metaphors are like similes without using the word "like" or “as.”

They state that one thing is something else. An example of a metaphor is “The lake is a whirlpool.”

Color PoemLine 1: ________ (color) isLine 2: ________ (color) isLine 3: ________ (color) isLine 4: ________ (color) isLine 5: ________ (color) smells likeLine 6: ________ (color) tastes likeLine 7: ________ (color) sounds likeLine 8: ________ (color) looks likeLine 9: ________ (color) feels likeLine 10: ________ (color) makes meLine 11: ________ (color) isBlue is the color of the sky.Blue is the waves in the ocean.Blue is the feeling I get sometimes.Blue is the icy color of glacial snow.Blue smells like freshly washed bed sheets.Blue tastes like freshly squeezed blueberries.Blue sounds like jets flying through the clouds.Blue looks like the clear waters of the Hawaiian waters as I’m snorkeling.Blue feels like the snow while I’m skiing at Mt. Bachelor.Blue makes me want to put on my coat, hat and gloves.Blue is a state of being

Five Senses Poem

Five senses poems use your senses to study or investigate a subject. #4 The focus of the poem is on using similes. Similes are comparisonsbetween two unlike things using with words “like” or “as.”Directions:Line 1. Tell what color an emotion or idea looks like to you.Line 2. Tell what the emotion or idea tastes like (imagine it has a taste)Line 3. Tell what the emotion or idea sounds like.Line 4. Tell what emotion or idea smells like.Line 5. Tell what the emotion or idea looks like.Line 6. Tell how the emotion or idea makes you feel.Examples:Summer is yellow.It tastes like lemonade.It sounds like kids splashing in a lake.It smells like dandelions.It looks like boating.It makes me feel overjoyed. Rain is clear.It tastes like water.It sounds like pounding on your windows.It smells like fresh pine trees.It looks like dew drops on plants.It makes me feel cool.

Imagery

Simile

Personification

Aural Imagery

Symbol

Metaphor

• Imagery

Simile

Aural Imagery

Symbol

Metaphor

Personification: Giving human qualities to objects and animals

Personification

The moon gazed on my midnight labors,While, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding- places

-Mary Shelley Frankenstein

The Wind

James Stephens (1882-1950)

The wind stood up and gave a shout.He whistled on his fingers andKicked the withered leaves aboutAnd thumped the branches with his hand And said he’d kill an kill and kill,And so he will and so he will

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

The angry clouds marched across the sky.

The lonely train whistle cried out in the night.

The hungry chainsaw growled loudly.The stubborn dense fog swallowed us.The evening stars winked at me from

the sky.

Which is the grumpiest?

Which is the wisest?

He who owns the whistle, rules the world

“January wind and the sun playing truant again.Rain beginning to scratch its fingernails across

the blackboard sky.”

“O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out. . .”

Excerpt from Roger McGough

The MoonPercy ShelleyAnd, like a dying lady, lean and pale,Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,Out of her chamber, lead by the insaneAnd feeble wanderings of her fading brain,The moon arose up in the murky east, A white and shapeless mass.

Art thou pale for wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,And ever changing like a joyless eyeThat finds no object worth its constancy?

Your turn Personify the following:

The VacuumThe house is quiet now

The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,

Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth

Grinning into the floor, maybe at my

Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.

I’ve lived this way long enough,

But when my old woman died her soul

Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear

To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust

And the woolen mice, and begin to howl

Because there is old filth everywhere

She used to crawl, in corner and under the stair.

I know now how life is cheap as dirt,

And still the hungry, angry heart

Hangs on and howls, biting at air.

What is the speaker’s attitude about housework?

Your Turn—Portfolio Poem #5Use personification to bring one of the

following to life: WaterStarsSunTreeA dentist’s chairCell phoneAnythingYour poem should be at least 8 lines

long

Personify it!!

“Hope, thou bold taster of delight”Richard Crashaw

“Memory, that exquisite blunderer”Amy Clampitt

Your Turn—Portfolio Poem #6

Personify Jealousy, Anger, Pride, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Love , or some other emotion

Your poem should be between 4-8 lines

Simile

Aural imagery• alliteration•Assonance

•Onomatopoeia

Metaphor

Personification

Imagery

Symbol

Symbol• Highly suggestive in a few words

• Physical object that represents or stands for something else

• Most powerful symbols do not specify the ideas they represent

Tips on studying symbol

List the meaning of each symbol

Explain how each symbol contributes to the overall meaning of the poem

Symbol A Work of ArtificeThe bonsai treeIn the attractive potCould have grown eighty feet tallOn the side of a mountainTill split by lightning.But a gardener

Carefully pruned itIt is nine inches high.Every day as he whittles back the branchesThe gardener croons, It is your nature To be small and cozy,Domestic and weak;How lucky, little tree, To have a pot to grow in.With living creaturesOne must begin very earlyTo dwarf their growth:The bound feet, The crippled brain, The hair in curlers, The hand you love to touch. Marge Piercy

A Work of Artifice

1. What are the symbols in the

following poem?  2. What do they represent? How are

these symbols used to contribute to the meaning of the poem?

Imagery may be defined as the representation through language of sense experience. It is the use of words to create a mental picture. Poetry appeals to our senses, of course through its music and rhythms, which we actually hear when it is read aloud. But indirectly it appeals to our sense experience, the representation to the imagination of sense experience.

Imagery

Sensuous imagery—pleasurable for its own sake, but also provides concreteness and immediacy.

The word image perhaps most often suggests a mental picture, something seen in the mind’s eye—and visual imagery is the kind of imagery that occurs most frequently in poetry. But an image may also represent a sound (auditory imagery); a smell (olfactory imagery); a taste (gustatory imagery); touch, such as hardness, softness, wetness, or heat and cold (tactile imagery).

Imagery cont’d

Though the term image suggests a thing seen, when speaking of images in poetry we generally mean a word or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience.

Remember to ask why are the images important? Imagery usually helps to illuminate the meaning of the poem.

Meeting at NightThe gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low;And the startled little waves that leapIn fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow,And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears;A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratchAnd blue spurt of a lighted match,And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Highlight the images that appeal to your senses. How do they contribute to the meaning of the poem?

Your turn—Portfolio Poem #7

Write a poem that appeals to the five sense. Your poem should be 10-12 lines.

Hyperbole

An exaggerated expression, also called overstatement, for a particular effect, which may be humorous, satirical, or intensely emotional. Hyperbole is the expression of folktales and legends.

Example: I have mountains of work to do.

Hyperbole

The poet uses hyperbole to overstate something to reveal the truth. In a poem called “Sow” Sylvia Plath describes how much the sow eats. She writes, “Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,/ Proceeded to swill/ The seven seas and every earth-quaking continent.”

Andrew Marvel “ Two hundred years should go to

praise / Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze:

Two hundred to adore each breast:

And thirty thousand to the rest. . .”

-To his Coy Mistress

One Art—Elizabeth BishopThe art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, ornext- to -last, of three loved houses went.The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evidentthe art of losing’s not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Villanelle— poem that uses the repetition of lines

1. How is hyperbole used in this poem? For what reason?

Your turn #9Write a poem that uses hyperbole. Your poem should be between 10-12 lines A hint: The poem “One Art” repeats the same line several times (villanelle). Try writing a poem that uses the same line to begin and end the poem.

OnomatopoeiaWe are familiar with onomatopoeia even if we don’t understand the word. When two cars collide, what sound do they make? Crash! That is onomatopoeia – words that make the sound they are imitating.

Here are some more examples

Screech HissCluckNeighBuzzCrashPow

Here is a poem by Eve Merriam appropriately titled “Onomatopoeia.” Highlight all of the different sounds you hear.

The rusty spigot

sputter,

utters

a sputter,

spatters a smattering of drops,

gashes wider;

slash,

splatters,

scatters,

spurts,

finally stops sputtering

and plash!

gushes rushes splashes

clear water dashes.

1. What words did you highlight?