Poetry: Seeing Likenesses
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Figures of Speech
Metaphors and Similes
Personification: Making the
World Human
Practice
Figures of Speech
Poetry is alive because poets make imaginative
comparisons.
We all make comparisons
in our everyday speech:
“My little sister is a
real doll!”
“The dancer was
spinning like a top.”
Figures of Speech
Poets have a special talent for getting us to look
at things differently.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed; . . .
William Shakespeare
from Sonnet 18
Figures of Speech
Imaginative comparisons between unlike things
are called figures of speech.
There are three main figures of speech:
metaphors
similes
personification
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Metaphors and Similes
A metaphor is a kind of comparison that directly
compares one thing to another.
If you say, “My
brother—that rat—
got me in trouble
again,”
you are making a
metaphor.
You are saying your brother is a rat.
Metaphors and Similes
Here are the first three lines from Alfred Noyes’s
poem “The Highwayman”:
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,…
What metaphor for the wind
do you see?
What was the moon?
What was the road?
Metaphors and Similes
If you say your brother is “like a rat” or “as sneaky
as a rat,” you are making a simile.
A simile is the
comparison of one thing
to another unlike thing
using specific words, such
as
like
as
resembles
Metaphors and Similes
Poets try to find unusual metaphors and similes.
My thoughts are perched on a
high twig.
Duty is a bee, serving the
flower-clients along her route.
“Surprised by joy—impatient as
the Wind”
—William Wordsworth
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Personification: Making the World Human
“The sky wept buckets all day.”
“The swan flirted, shyly turning
her head.”
Can a sky weep? Can a swan flirt?
What are the sky and the swan being compared to?
Personification: Making the World Human
Personification is a type of comparison that
speaks of something that is not human as if it
had human abilities and reactions.
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands, . . .
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”
Practice
Let’s Try It
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players;
They have their exits and their
entrances,
And one man in his time plays many
parts,
His acts being seven ages.
Here’s part of a
play by William
Shakespeare.
1. What
comparisons
are made here?
2. What figure
of speech are
they?
Practice
Let’s Try It
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players;
They have their exits and their
entrances,
And one man in his time plays many
parts,
His acts being seven ages.
1. What
comparisons
are made here?
The world is
compared to
a stage, and
people are
compared to
actors.
Practice
Let’s Try It
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players;
They have their exits and their
entrances,
And one man in his time plays many
parts,
His acts being seven ages.
2. What figure
of speech are
they?
The
comparisons
are metaphors.
They do not
use like or as.
Practice
Let’s Try It
And then the whining schoolboy, with his
satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like
snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.
3. What
comparisons are
made here?
4. What figure of
speech are they?
How do you know?
Practice
Let’s Try It
And then the whining schoolboy, with his
satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like
snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.
3. What
comparisons are
made here?
A schoolboy is
compared to a
snail. A lover is
compared to a
furnace.
Practice
Let’s Try It
And then the whining schoolboy, with his
satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like
snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.
4. What figure
of speech are
they? How do
you know?
They are both
similes because
they use the word
like.
Poetry: Seeing Likenesses
The End