December 2016: Similes and Metaphor

Hello, and best wishes for the end of 2016 and the beginning of the new year! I hope 2017 brings you much creativity and enjoyment of existing pursuits as well as new endeavors.
 
One new thing I am doing is creating a website, where I will be listing my classes and archiving these metaphor discussions. Since it's not quite ready, one thing I wanted to let you know about is that, in addition to teaching at The Loft, I do one-on-one creative writing mentoring, tailored to the goals of the individuals I work with. You can e-mail me if at any point you'd like to know more, and I will also let you know when I officially launch my website.
 
Okay – on to Metaphor and More!
 
Today I wanted to look a little more at simile by giving you a link to a blog piece at the Poetry Foundation website titled "Similes and the Moving Van of Metaphor," by poet A. E. Stallings. In this piece, Stallings starts with some humor, punning, and interesting thoughts about etymology pertaining to metaphor. Then she goes on to talk about simile and what she appreciates about it. As we talked about in Mastering Metaphor, simile and metaphor are not competing with each other for greatness in the writer's toolkit – one isn't superior to the other, but it's useful and interesting to pay attention to their different uses, so that you may employ them with intentionality and impact. Stallings writes that she senses a misguided tendency in the writing world to view metaphor as superior and simile as more "prosey, discursive, dull" – and then she goes on show us some examples of simile used effectively.
 
I like how Stallings describes simile as a comparison of two things that create "an interesting dissonance that continues to vibrate." I think the fact that, in simile, the comparison is pointed out to the reader through comparison words such as "like" or "as" does create an echo between the compared things and our awareness of it as a comparison. In other ways, however, I think I consider metaphor as more of a vibrating "dissonance" – that is, a dissonance between the compared things themselves simply because the tenor is being stated directly in terms of the vehicle (e.g., "that child is a flower") rather than the two parts remaining more separated by simile's use of comparison words (e.g., "that child is like a flower"). How does it feel to you? There is a technical term, "cognitive dissonance," which is what we experience when we encounter metaphor – the discomfort we feel when our minds are asked to reconcile two different ideas. When thinking about a metaphor, our brain senses something discordant and quickly scans through all the characteristics we know about the things being compared to see how they could be seen as similar. I think cognitive dissonance may often be stronger with metaphor, but not always.
 
But I do get what Stallings means – "… to put it visually," she says, " it is as if the simile sets up two pictures before our eyes that we can continually go back and forth between, noting similarities and differences, whereas in the metaphor, the image of the metaphor almost replaces the original one it overlays."
 
I think Stallings is saying that because simile calls our attention to the comparison, we are more aware of the dissonance than we are in metaphor, where we are immersed in a blend of the two things being compared. That's a great point, but I don't know if that is true for me – in metaphor, I don't get the sense of the vehicle replacing the tenor. I still feel the blend, and I think metaphor may actually make the dissonance ring inside me a little louder via the fact that the two parts are being directly equated; but perhaps simile creates more of an intellectual dissonance and the metaphor creates more of an emotional-intellectual dissonance? What do these differences feel like to you? I think all of this is interesting to contemplate.
 
Stallings gives some examples from the Odyssey and Langley's "Gorse Fires," which she describes as "a condensing of the end of the Odyssey to almost nothing but its amazing similes," and you may find these interesting to read. At any rate, may we all, as Stallings says, become " enamored of the simile and its possibilities–of syntax, dissonance, irony, commentary, complexity, allusion, disillusion."
 
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As part of this discussion I thought I would also show you what I think are some effective similes in a poem called "Mind-Body Problem," by Katha Pollitt.
 
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/02/04
 
I find the following similes interesting:
 
1.
 
… made me tyrannize and patronize it
like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
English-professor husband ashamed of his wife –
her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
and regional vowels.
 
Here, the things that are being compared are the manner in which the speaker "tyrannizes and patronizes" her body and the way a "cruel medieval baron" treats his subjects or "an ambitious English-professor husband " treats his wife. That is, the two "things" being compared are each a complex of attitudes and behaviors.
 
I think this use of simile is very good. If it were changed to metaphor, the effect of the speaker's reflection on her life would be diminished, I think. Or it might make it sound too severe. It also wouldn't make as much sense, grammatically, unless it were rewritten, and it might be difficult to rewrite without making it awkward or destroying the effect.
 
…………………………
Here is another example of simile from the poem:
 
2.
 
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
and Sydney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
instead of the current curious shift of power
 
 
In this simile, she suggests that even though she and her body have had their differences, perhaps they could have found more common ground and bonded under times of duress. (The reference is to a 1958 crime film called "The Defiant Ones," starring Tony Curtis and Sydney Poitier, about two escaped prisoners who are shackled together and must cooperate in order to escape.)
 
Again, the simile, with its comparison word, is perfect for this context, I think. Taking out the "like" and rewriting it has metaphor would eliminate a bit of the sense we have of the speaker's reflection and sense of wonder:
 
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other –Tony Curtis
and Sydney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
 
And one more simile from the poem:
 
3.
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body as though by some
swift and powerful dog.
 
I find this a very powerful simile, and I think it is more effective for being a simile rather than a metaphor. Consider it if it were written as a metaphor:
 
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body,
a swift and powerful dog.
 
 
I think that the original, which calls our attention to the comparison, reflects the speaker's wonder –and astonishment – at time, aging, and how quickly it all goes by the time you're in middle age. Perhaps it also reflects her ability to perhaps be in denial part of the time. (We can always still say it's "as though," when we don't want to face up to our own mortality.) Rewritten as metaphor, I find myself more focused on the ways in which the speaker's body might look or act like a dog rather than the allusion to the body's time clock.
 
It's also interesting how, in each of these examples, the simile is part of an extended metaphor of the speaker and her body being two separate "individuals"– individuals who are somewhat at odds with each other. We can say that the body is being personified – which is curious, because we think of our body as being part of our person, but the body without the mind is different from what we think of as our self – we don't normally think of the body as having a life apart from the rest of us, which is how she describes it here. This brings up some great philosophical points for all of us to contemplate!
 
I hope you enjoyed reading this poem.
 
As you think about the end of 2016 and the beginning of the new year, what might you write using simile? Perhaps it could be something such as "The end of the year is like…" Or
 
"My anticipation of the new year is like…"
 
Have fun, and all best wishes for your writing and everything else in the new year!
 
Jennifer