Dear friends,

I’ve decided to create this thread because I think it will be useful for aspiring poets to have some basic knowledge of certain poetic tools such as linebreak, metaphor, etc. For those who are familiar with PFFA this thread is going to be something like their Blurbs of Wisdom. To be honest most of the points mentioned here will be taken from them. I will also incorporate notes from my other readings and thus it will take some time for me to update this thread. So please be patient with me.

A beginner poet usually started off by simply wanting to share his/her emotions/experiences with the readers or that special someone via his/her poems.

Generally the focus of the poems is about ‘self’ in the highly ambiguous term ‘self-expression’ i.e. these poems are mainly about ‘this is how I feel’, ‘this is what I did’, etc. They are about me, my experiences, my emotions, my feelings, etc.

I am not surprise if these poems received very positive comments in some overseas online poetry forums. Some of my old poems were too, highly praised by them. But when I look at those poems now, I realized they are not what I would considered good poetry.

Well I guess if you are happy with your poems, it is absolutely fine to stop at this stage. Most of us do.

However some of you might want to take your poetry further, i.e. to explore the ‘expression’ side of it. To express something efficiently, you need to learn the necessary skills. Just like learning cooking, dancing, singing etc. you need to equip yourself with the correct skills.

The shift here is towards a reader-centered writing style. This is when you need to take factors such as linkbreaks, meter, abstract/concrete, clichés, rhythm, spelling, etc. into consideration.

For example you have written a love poem and you don't really care what other people think about it maybe except for that special someone. Fine. But wouldn't it be great to write one that stands out from the rest i.e. a love poem that touches all who are in love?

Take the following poem written by me years ago as an example.

Just for You

Life is full of Joys and Pains,
In every heart a dream remain,
Should sad memories ever haunt your mind,
Always remember I'm by your side.

Believe in yourself, have Faith in God,
Over the mountains against all odds,
Every sunrise is a bright new day,
Yesterday's tears will never stay.

Is it special to you? No. But is it special to me? Why of course! It was written for my first love.

But it is just another love poem to my readers.

What I am trying to stress here is that you need to write poems that mean something to your readers. As a poet you need to decide which part of the term ‘self-expression’ you wish to focus on.

To be fair, since I do not have any formal training in poetry writing, you have all the right to question and disagree with what I am going to post here. So please feel free to create another thread for healthy discussions. Please do not post anything in this thread. Remember these are merely guidelines; you do not need to follow them to the last word.

It is entirely up to you. The pen is in your hand.

Happy writing!

(If you have anything to add or if you have spotted any grammatical errors, please pm me. Thanks.)

Dear friends,

In addition, this thread is also for you to share articles such as simple write-up or book reviews on poetry. Please indicate if they are written by you and if not, to acknowledge the source for example by providing the link to the original website.

Please pm me your articles (with titles) and I will post them here on your behalf.

If you wish to comment on the articles/notes, please create a new thread with the title “Referring to (title of the article/note) contributed by (name of contributor). ”

This is something new so let’s all give it a try.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 13/05/2006

On Confucian Ethics and Poetry

Confucius or Kong Fuzi meaning “Kong, the master” was born in a state called Lu in China, in 551 B.C. His teachings were generally known as “Confucian ethics.” After his death, other teachers of Confucian ethics continued to develop the master’s teachings. You can easily find information concerning his teaching in the Internet, threrefore I am not going into detail here. I am also not going to discuss its role in present-day Singapore because it is not my intention to attack/defend the virtues of Confucius ethics. Instead what I am going to do here is to show you that you can easily applied the wisdom of Confucian Ethics to poetry.

First let me share with you some of my favourite Confucian quotes/principles.

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Wang Yangming believed that self-realisation cannot be taught. The students must first have their own will to undertake this process. (Confucian Ethics, p41)

“Some are born with knowledge; some know by studying and some acquire knowledge after a painful feeling of being ignorant.” (Doctrine of the Mean)

“When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them. When we see unworthy men, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.” (Analects IV: 17)

“The man of perfect virtue wishing to be established himself seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.” (Analects VI: 28.)

“To be fond of something is better than merely to know it, and to find joy in it is better than to be fond of it.” (Analects VI: 20)

“Know what you know and also know what you know not; that is true knowledge.” (Analects 11: 17)

The Book of Mencius describes a sage as being “the same in kind as other man” and yet “standing far above the crowd”. (Mencius 2A: 2)

“Confucius himself strove to become a sage all his life, even though in the eyes of others he seemed one already. Indeed, people who think they are already perfect in character and knowledge and need no further improvement are already imperfect just because they think this way.” (Confucian Ethics, p53)

“I once spent all day thinking without taking food and all night thinking without going to bed, but I found that I gained nothing from it. It would have been better for me to have spent the time in learning.” (Analects XV: 31)

“What is meant by making the Wills sincere is to avoid self-deception.” (The Great Learning VI)

“There is no greater joy for me than to find an examination that I am true to myself.” (Mencius VIIA : 4)

“Without friends, studying alone would result only in loneliness and limited knowledge.” (Book of Rites)

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Now allow me to change a few words and rephrase a few sentences and we have the following:

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I can teach you the craft of poetry writing but self-realization cannot be taught. You may master the necessary tools to write a good poem but without the proper mindset, you will never improve. You must first have the will to undertake the process. Are you willing to leave your ego outside the door? Some are born with knowledge; but most know by studying. We acquired knowlwdge only after a painful feeling of being ignorant.

Remember, no one can claim to know so much that he/she can afford to stop learning. Poetry writing is a ceaseless process; there is always more to learn. Poets who think they are already perfect and need no further improvement are already imperfect just because they think this way.

Most aspiring poets lack humility. We are often tempted to deceive others and ourselves about our own abilities. The result is that our real abilities are badly affected. We become over-confident and complacent. Avoid self-deception. Be true to yourself.

For a start do not spend all day worrying about writing. You will gain nothing from it. It would have been better for you to spend the time reading good poems and learning their crafts. When you read poems of worth, you should think of equaling them. When you see unworthy poems, you should remind yourself not to commit similar mistakes.

When you think you are ready, feel free to write what you know and also write what you know not. Most of the time poets started off with very vague ideas. It is like visiting a new place for the first time. Each new poem offers a new experience. But you can also write about things that you know. You can write about falling in love, death, suicidal thoughts, etc. The trick is to write in such a way that your poems stand far above the crowd.

However, you must also find joy in writing. To be fond of poetry is better than merely to know it, and to find joy in it is better than to be fond of it.

To establish yourself as a poet, you must also seek to establish others. To improve yourself, you need friends. They act like a refining tool, shaping and polishing your poems. Friends are important.

Writing is a lonely process. But for learning, you have a choice.

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Amazing right?

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 13/5/2006

Let Us Pause: The Caesura
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

When lines reach a length of nine or ten syllables, one of the things, which occur, is a slight pause somewhere within the line (this pause is normal in everyday speech in most sentences). This pause is called the caesura and it is an important element in poetic rhythm. Most often, it occurs around the middle of a line, usually at the end of a phrase, and may be indicated by a comma, although not necessarily.

One can move the caesura around in order to emphasize certain words or phrases:

"'Tis with our judgements as our watches, # none
Go just alike,# yet each believes his own."

(caesura indicated by #)

Here, in the first line, Alexander Pope emphasizes "none" not only by placing it in the rhyming position but also by preceding it with the caesura. Similarly, in the second line, he emphasizes the contrast by preceding it with the caesura. Milton achieves the same effect in the following passage which describes how and why Adam chooses to eat the forbidden fruit even though he fully understands the meaning of this act:

". . . he scrupled not to eat.
Against his better knowledge,# not deceived,
But fondly overcome # with female charm."

The caesuras underscore that Adam, unlike Eve, is "not deceived" but that he makes his choice because he foolishly ("fondly".) allows himself to be attracted more strongly to Eve's "female charm"than to God. Likewise, Milton reveals through caesuras Eve's sense of guilt for causing Adam's fall in this passage in which she says she will ask God to place all the blame on her and to punish her alone:

"The sentence, # from thy head removed, # may light
On me, # sole cause to thee of all this woe,
Me, # me only, # just object of His ire."

Here, in the second and third lines, the caesuras fall after the repeated pronoun "me," clearly showing her feelings of guilt.

Also, what we see here is that lines may contain more than a single caesura, although one has to be very careful not to break the rhythmical flow of the line up too much with too many unnecessary pauses. A line with multiple caesuras often conveys a sense of broken or chaotic thought or feeling, as in this line from Shakespeare, in which King Lear, emotionally and mentally broken by the death of his daughter, refuses to accept her death as fact:

"Never, # never, # never, # never, # never."

In this line, Milton captures the chaotic nature of Hell where Satan and his followers are imprisoned:

"Rocks, # caves, # lakes, # fens, # bogs, # dens, # and shades of death."

Lines such as these are, however, enormously difficult to achieve.

Not all caesural pauses are equally "stressed"; some pauses are very slight, others much more strongly pronounced. Those caesuras marked by full stops within lines (semicolons and periods) tend to be stronger than those marked by commas or unmarked by punctuation, as in these lines from Milton in which Satan rejects the possibility of asking God for forgiveness :

"Farewell remorse! # All good to me is lost;
Evil, # be thou my good: # by thee at least
Divided empire # with Heaven's king I hold."

Here, the caesuras after "remorse" and "my good" occur after full stops and are markedly stronger than those after "Evil" and "empire."

In a Nutshell

1) Caesura is an important element in poetic rhythm and can be moved around to emphasize certain words or phrases.

2) Multiple caesuras are often used to convey a sense of broken or chaotic thought or feeling. However too many unnecessary pauses will break the rhythmical flow of the line.

3) Caesuras marked by full stops within lines (semicolons and periods) tend to be stronger than those marked by commas or unmarked by punctuation.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 14/05/2006

On Clichés

Clichés are words and phrases that have been overused to the point of losing its intended face or novelty. They once made a striking impression when they first appeared but have since lost their magic touch.

So how do you know if something is a cliché or not? You can start by reading the first of the phrase and then ask yourself if you know how it ends. If you do, most probably it is a cliché. And if you think you may hear it before, again, it is a cliché.

Here are some examples,

Every cloud has a silver lining
All is fair in love and war
No guts, no glory
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Nobody is perfect
Ate like a pig
Black as night
Snowy white
Piece of cake
Rome was not built in one day

Cliché weaken your poem by sucking the freshness out of it. They are always new ways to say something; and if there isn’t maybe you need to find fresher subject matter. The ability to find original phrases is one of the major factors that differentiate between an established poet and a beginner poet.

In a Nutshell

Avoid cliché – it sucks.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 14/05/2006

Is that really a poem? by Gilbert Koh

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates.

Gilbert said ...

He could very well have added that the unexamined poem is also not worth writing. I think that every poet, at one time or another, has had the following experience -

he writes, and he writes, working for hours on a new piece of writing. At the end of all that labour, he scrutinises the paper before him. Doubt creeps in, and he asks himself, "Is that really a poem?"

It's a good question, of course. And in answering it, I have my personal criteria. To me, none of my poems is a poem unless I have, in the course of writing it, scrutinised some aspect of my own beliefs, thoughts or experiences, seriously challenged and engaged myself, and walked away with some new, personal insight.

Otherwise, what I've written is probably just a collection of clever words. Like a slick new ad. Or a politician's speech. But not a poem.

If you are in the habit of writing clever words without seriously engaging yourself, well, do feel free to congratulate yourself for being clever. But don't mistake yourself for a poet. If you don't take a risk and challenge yourself, what you produce is unlikely to be a genuine poem.

DP said …

Sorry Gilbert, but can you kindly elaborate on this? I have read it several times but I am still not sure what you are trying to say here. I mean, is it necessary that a poem must always provide one with new, personal insight?

Gilbert said …

That's how I think about poems (whether I'm reading or writing them). A poem has to show me something that I wasn't aware of; or it has to show me something that I was aware of, but in a way I'd never thought of before. If I don't discover anything new in a poem, then it doesn't work for me. It's not a poem to me.

An extreme negative example of what I mean is the abundance of teenage angst "poetry" in blogosphere. You get plenty of cheesy lines like:

"I loved you with all my soul, but you walked out of my life. My heart is forever broken into a million pieces ..."

I have no doubt that the emotion is authentic (we were all teenagers once upon a time, weren't we?). But these kinds of lines don't present anything original, insightful or perceptive. There are probably thousands of teenagers who put these same kinds of lines out onto the internet every day.

It could be cathartic for them, but it isn't poetry to me. More specifically to your question, yes, I always get some new insight out of writing my own poems (ie those works which I actually dare call "poems" ).

When I start writing a poem, I hardly ever know what the finished product is going to look like. Usually I have two or three lines floating in my head; or some visual image that I want to capture in words (eg old man walking with grandson on the beach - you know which poem I'm referring to).

As I start to put the lines down, the process which I called "self-engagement” begins quite apart from solving technical problems like flow, structure, choice of image, I have to start asking myself questions like -

do I have really have anything to say here? Why is this important? Why should I bother to write this poem?

... and depending on the subject matter, the engagement can be much more specific:

How do I feel about my father growing old? How much time has he got left? Is he afraid? How do I feel about it? What kind of father am I to my own son? Isn't it strange that one day I will be an old man too? Etc.

And the process of examining my own thoughts and feelings about the topic leads me to create what I hope can authentically be called a poem.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 15/05/2006

On Abstractions

I have mixed feelings regarding abstractions because I believe if you used them appropriately they can be quite useful. So why are we so against abstractions to the extent of treating them like plagues i.e. to be avoided at all cost?

Well because it has got to do with our senses.

Please read the following taken from Blurbs of Wisdom

Poetry is Experience: The Writer's Responsibility

Why does a reader come to a poem in the first place? Is it because she wants to know about the poet? Is it because she wants to know what the poet feels about something? Is it because she wants the poet to lecture her about something? Absolutely not.

A reader comes to a poem for one reason: she wants to experience something herself, to feel something herself. She doesn't care what the writer has experienced or felt; she wants those things for herself. That's why successful poetry is reader-centered, not writer-centered.

And how do we experience things? Fundamentally, through the senses. We see the shape of dogwood blossoms, we hear the sound of rain on leaves, we smell fresh cow dung. Our experiences are rooted in specific, concrete, immediate sense perceptions.

And that is precisely the function to poetry: to create experiences for the reader. The only way it can do so is through focused, detailed sensory perceptions--images. It's not an accident that the word "image" is the root of "imagination"; poetry is that use of language which allows the reader to have an experience in her imagination.

For that reason, abstraction frequently is the enemy of successful poetry because abstractions are not things we ever directly experience. Abstractions are generalizations drawn from experience and, as such, are at least one remove away from direct experience. We never actually experience "beauty"; we see a rose, a seashell, a face, which we identify as "beautiful," but that identification is a process of generalization based on similarities both of sense perception and of emotive response to those sense perceptions. Only the immediate, the concrete, the tangible produce both the sense perception and the accompanying emotive response; the generalized and abstracted conceptualizations themselves lack the capacity to do so.

Poetry often deals with generalizations and abstractions; successful poems, however, are those which do so in concrete, specific terms which allow the reader to experience something. It's of little use to the reader to be told the writer has experienced "enlightenment," for instance. So what? The reader doesn't care about the writer; she wants to experience it herself. That's why a poem would have to present the experience of "enlightenment" in direct sensory terms, not generalized abstractions.

Certainly, very good writers use generalizations and abstractions, but they almost inevitably do so in concrete, imagistic terms. Pope's Essay on Man deals with the abstract conceptions of a particular form of universal order, but the poem is a great one in part because Pope is able to express the abstract conceptions by means of a wealth of specific, perceptible images. For example, when Pope says

"Hope springs eternal in the human b.reast:
Man never is, but always to be blest"

he follows with a concrete illustration:

"Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the colud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."

The abstract conception is realized (in the sense of made tangible and perceptible) in specific, concrete terms.

Shakespeare does the same thing with the abstract conception of "love" in "Sonnet 116," where love, among other things, becomes concretized as the North Star, always visible and providing a reliable guide: "It is the star to ev'ry wand'ring bark." Similarly, Keats, in recognizing that he is unlikely to live long enough to achieve those things he wishes and that they therefore have no value to him, describes this recognition not in abstract terms but in a concrete image:

"--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink."

Keats portrays himself standing on a desolate beach staring out into the vast ocean where "Love and Fame"--implicitly described as ships--sink and are lost forever. These concrete images communicate far more than any quantity of pure abstractions ever could.

Beginning writers almost universally lack the skill to deal adequately with abstractions and are therefore told to avoid them until they have acquired considerable experience. Focus instead on communicating with the reader through focused, concrete images because these are what allow the reader to have the imaginative experience that is what poetry is all about.

In other words, ask not what the reader can do for you, but what you can do for the reader.

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Ao you see abstractions if employed in a thoughtful manner can be useful.

In my opinion abstractions can be divided into three types i.e.

1) Abstract word/phrase

For example,

Love
Death
Soul
Passion
Pain
Dream

2) Abstract statement/line

For example,

You hurt me so much
Set my love free!
I love you with my body and my soul
You have shattered my dream
I am burning with desire
Drowned in the sea of misery
Lost in the mist of unknown

3)Abstract poem

Personally these are poems that are open for individual interpretations for example The Sick Rose by William Blake and The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Clearly these poems allowed rooms for imaginations and engaged the intellect.

In a Nutshell

1) Avoid using abstractions.

2) If you have to use them, back them up with concrete images and details.

3) Finally ask yourself if they contribute to the poem.

Additional note: Read the real inspiration behind The Road Not Taken.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 16/5/2006

Forced Rhyme
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

What do we mean by ‘forced rhyme’?

Forced rhyme is when the poem suffers for the sake of the rhyme. Often, the word order is distorted to make a rhyme work. For example-

‘In front of me the pathway forked-
along the narrow path I walked.’

It would be more natural to say ‘I walked along the narrow path’, but the sentence structure has been inverted. Another common problem is the use of unnatural word-choices for the sake of rhyme. For example-

‘And when her lovely eyes I viewed
I saw that they were many-hued.’

We would not normally say we ‘viewed’ someone’s eyes. ‘Looked at’, ‘looked into’, or ‘saw’ would all be more natural.

Here is another example-

‘Tom falls in love with Sue,
so he her does pursue
although she runs away;
"Will you love me?" he asks,
hiding inside his mask.
But she answers, "No way.’

"so he her does pursue"--Here, not only is the syntax distorted by inversion as Harry mentioned, but the "does" is strictly filler, a word that doesn't need to be here stuck in to make the line longer so the rhyme word is in the proper position at the end of the line.

"hiding inside his mask"--This entire line exists solely for the purpose of providing a rhyme word (although it's slightly off as it doesn't end in "s" as "asks" does) for "asks. Moreover, the meaning of this line flatly contradicts everything else we've seen in the poem about Tom who in fact has been quite openly pursuing Sue and makes no secret of the fact. This introduction of contradictory elements is one form of this problem; similar is introducing an idea in a rhyme word which simply isn't developed or used anywhere in the poem, again just for the sake of rhyme.

The "away"/"No way" rhyme--Technically, this isn't a rhyme at all, since the word "way" is the same in both cases. This repetition of a rhyming word is called an "identity," and is considered a serious flaw in rhyming poetry. The same problem occurs in rhyming words like "sea" and "see" because rhyme is based on pronunciation, not spelling, so "sea"/"see" are also identities, not rhymes.

A related issue is multi-syllable rhymes (Amanda/Panda, fission/mission, cannelloni/Tony). These often sound forced in English poetry and are best avoided. One exception is in humorous verse. Slightly exaggerated, even slightly forced rhyme often works to good effect in comic verse, and multi-syllable rhymes are good for this reason. My favourite example (by Hillaire Belloc) is-

‘I shoot the hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum;
Because if I use the leaden ones,
its hide is sure to flatten ’em.’

or, for another-

‘There once was a gaucho named Bruno
Who said “There is one thing I do know.
A girl may be fine,
and young boys are divine,
but a llama is numero uno”

When a poem uses a lot of forced rhyme, the result is very awkward, usually sounds dreadful, and distracts the reader from the content of the poem. In the best-rhymed poetry the reader is hardly aware of the rhyming; it subtly enhances the sound of the poem without forcing itself down the reader’s throat.

In a Nutshell

1) Do not distort the word order to make a rhyme work for example using inversion.

2) Do not use unnatural word-choices for the sake of rhyme.

3) Avoid using multi-syllable rhymes unless you are writing humorous verse.

4) Rhyme is based on pronunciation, not spelling,

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 18/5/06

Figurative Language, Part I
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

Figurative language is language which is non-literal, that is, language in which the actual meaning is something other than what the words would seem to mean if taken literally. For instance, when Keats says, "a new planet swims into his ken," does he really mean that the planet has fins and/or flippers and that it moves by wiggling them or its tail, or that it flounders (no pun intended--really) along with a dogpaddling motion? Not really. What he means is that the planet moves with the graceful steady motion of something which possesses the capacity for swimming. In this case, he is using a metaphor, a specific type of comparison which here indicates that the motion of the planet through space is similar to the motion of a fish or otter in terms of how it moves.

Figurative language has a number of useful consequences.

First, it very often creates clear, specific images. For instances, Swinburne could have said, "Spring follows winter." Instead, in this line, he says, "The hounds of spring are on winter's traces," giving us a focused image of spring pictured as a pack of hunting dogs rapidly following the trail left by winter, implicitly described as a deer or some other form of prey.

Second, figurative language often extends our attention beyond the immediate situation. For example, the entire action of Dante's Commedia takes place in the world of the Christian afterlife (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise), but repeatedly throughout the work his figurative language draws us back into this world, the world in which we live and where the lessons of Christianity are to be applied, as in this simile from Canto III of the Inferno in which he describes the souls of the damned in Hell:

"As leaves in the autumn loosen and stream down
until its branch stands bare above its tatters
spread on the rustling ground . . . ."

Only in this world do things--leaves, men--die; we are being reminded of the condition of life in our world and of the necessity of being prepared for the next.

Here is a short introduction to some of the most common figures of speech.

I. Simile: A direct comparison between two things using words such as "like," "as," or "than" which indicate a comparison is being made. In some cases, such phrases as "it seems" or "it appears" also create comparisons.

A is like B. "My love is like a rose."

Here, the person described ("love") is compared to certain qualities of the rose, most likely the rose's beauty.

II. Metaphor: An indirect comparison between two things; there are two forms:

a) one thing is said to actually be the other:

A is B. "My love is a rose."

Unless the speaker has a flower fetish, he is again, as in the simile, comparing his human love's beauty to that of a rose.

b) one thing is substituted for the other:

B. "My rose."

This is the more common form of metaphor; it is that used in the line from Keats referred to above. No comparison is directly stated; rather, it's up to the reader to recognize the statement as a metaphor with the same meaning as the previous example.

Four Specialized Forms of Metaphors:

1. Synecdoche: A part of something is substituted for the entire thing:

"Hired hand" = a person hired to perform work with his hands
"Private eye" = a person hired to look for something

This device is used to emphasize that part of something which is of special importance in a particular situation, as when Housman describes a youth athlete (a runner) as "fleet foot."

2. Metonymy: One thing is substituted for a second thing when the two are closely associated:

"The White House" = The President
"Washington" = the federal government
"the crown" = the ruling monarch

3. Personification: To attribute specifically human qualities to something which is not human. The use of the pronouns "he" and "she" when applied to things other than humans is considered to create personification.

"The sun smiled at the sky."
"Time holds us in his hand."

Personification is used primarily to indicate to the reader that there is a distinctly human significance to something which isn't human, as when Keats personifies the season of Autumn in his poem "To Autumn"; in this poem, the pattern of the season becomes the idealized pattern for human life.

4. Apostrophe: To speak directly to something or someone; there are two forms:

(a) to speak to something that is not human as if it were human and capable of understanding; this form always also involves personification and can never be found separately from personification:

"Roll on, thou deep and mighty ocean."

(b) to speak to a person who is not physically present for some reason; this form can never involve personification:

(b) "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour."

Apostrophe of either type can be identified by the presence of one or more of the following devices:

(1) the use of the second person pronoun:

"Roll on, thou deep and mighty ocean."
"Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour."

(2) the thing or person addressed is called by name:

"Roll on, thou deep and mighty ocean."
"Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour."

(3) in some instances, poems employing apostrophe have titles of the form "To ________," with the word or name in the blank identifying that which is being addressed:

"To a Skylark"
"Ode to Melancholy"
"To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare"

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 18/5/06

Figurative Language, Part II
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

III. Hyperbole: To deliberately exaggerate the truth in order to emphasize the point being made; also called Overstatement:

"I've told you kids a million times to clean up your room."
"I'll love you forever."

IV. Understatement: The opposite of Hyperbole; to make something appear to be less important than it actually is, a more subtle form of emphasis. Understatement is most often phrased in one of two ways:

1) as uncertainty about something which is actually certain:

"Being dead, I think, isn't much fun."
"It is possible that you might not want to be sat upon by a
hippopotamus."

2) as the negative of the opposite of what is actually meant:

"She would not be unhappy to win the lottery."

V. Irony: A situation in which there is some discrepancy between what is expected and what is actually given; there are three forms:

a) Verbal Irony: What is said is the exact opposite of what is meant:

"Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit, to-who," a merry note."

Shakespeare is here describing the sound of a barn owl which is definitely neither musical nor pleasant; this type of irony requires that the reader recognize that what is said is in fact not true.

b) Irony of Situation: The outcome of a sequence of events is the opposite of what was expected.

c) Dramatic Irony: When the characters in a work expect a certain outcome of events, but the reader knows that the outcome will be the opposite of what the characters expect.

This form takes its name from its use in Greek tragedy. The Greek audiences already knew the stories being dramatized, so when they went to the theatre to see a performance of Oedipus, for instance, they were aware from the beginning that Oedipus had already fulfilled Apollo's prophecy and had killed his father and married his mother although Oedipus himself doesn't realize this until the climax of the drama, believing in fact that he has been able to prevent the prophecy from coming true.

VI. Paradox: In logic, a paradox refers to two statements which are completely contradictory:

"The following statement is true; the preceding statement is false."

"'All Cretans are liars,' the Cretan said."

In literature, the contradiction is only apparent; when examined closely, the contradictory elements do not really contradict each other because the statements are not intended to be understood literally.

Two statements which appear initially to contradict each other:

"Imprison me, or I can never be free."

Specialized Form of Paradox:

Oxymoron: A paradox expressed in a short phrase, usually but not always restricted to two contradictory words:

"Love's icy fire"
"Darkness visible"

In a Nutshell

Pick your poison!

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 19/5/2006

On Personification
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

Personification is a poetic tool that shouts rather than whispers.

The above is personification.

There is nothing to stop you from using personification. But before you do there are two things you need to know about it.

First, it is a blatant tool, which tends to be why it's used so often and so poorly by neophyte writers. 'Light reflected glaringly off of the tower' is effective, but 'The tower glared down at us' would not be. What you have to remember is the actuality of what you're describing. A reader will picture it, and the image of a castle turret sulking and glowering at passersby has the air of the ridiculous to it.

Imbuing inanimate objects with human life rarely works because that air of the ridiculous is so often present when you imagine, not just the metaphorical connection and symbolism involved with the personification, but the actuality of it. What would the personification really look like if it were to actually happen? If you can still manage to suppress all giggles when you do so, and you've also managed to retain metaphorical significance, you may have executed personification in a subtle enough manner to have actually worked.

The other, lesser problem is that once you personify something, you're pretty much stuck personifying it. If you don't, you are likely to run into using mixed metaphors, comparing a tower to a person and then to a steel bar or something along those lines.

Personification is more regularly successful when it is used to personify an abstract, rather than another concrete. By comparing an actual object to a human, you have more chance of running into the ridiculous, as it's easier and therefore funnier to picture something non-human behaving in a human, and utterly hilarious, fashion.

An abstract concept, such as science, can be made tangible, real, and therefore strong and immediate, by personification -- if done well. Again, it is not a tool generally used well by newer writers, as it is one that requires a delicate hand.

The danger in personifying abstracts is great, just as it is when personifying concretes. The danger lies in cliché; there are some archetypal abstracts that have been personified until they're blue in the face.

So personification is not necessarily bad. It usually is, but that's not its fault. It's the fault of the writers who encourage it to misbehave at poetry parties.

In a Nutshell

1) Stick with the same personification throughout the whole poem.

2) Better to personify an abstract rather than an actual object (concrete).

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 20/5/2006

How to Write Better Love Poetry
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, slightly modified version)

Reading through the poems posted to Love, it's noticeable that the same problems are coming up over and over again. This thread is intended to address those problems.

The first is clichés. Avoiding clichés is always difficult for beginners, and particularly when writing love poetry, because it's such well-worn ground. I won't go into it here, but read the threads on the subject in Blurbs of Wisdom. Once you know what a cliché is, the more poems you write, and the more time you invest in each one, the easier it is to identify and avoid them.

More specific to Love is the number of abstractions and generalities.

An abstraction is something that you can't see, hear, smell or touch, like 'love', 'pain' 'beauty' 'hate' 'doubt' or 'fear' (there are threads in Blurbs explaining why abstractions are unhelpful to poetry).

Obviously all emotions are abstractions in this sense. That means that poems specifically about emotions often end up full of abstractions. Also, if the poem concentrates purely on the emotional response of the poet, often the result is a poem with nothing of the lover in it at all. A loved one is reduced to nothing but a gush of happiness on the part of the poet; all the things that make them special – the way their skin smells, their lilting accent, the way they take their tea, the curve of their buttocks in their scruffy jeans, their moodiness in the morning – has all vanished. This is what I mean by 'generalities'. All the interesting specifics are gone.

When you read a poem which simply tells you about the poet's emotions, you may recognise those emotions; that's why so many of the comments offered in this forum are things like 'I know how you feel.' But the ideally, the poem should make you feel the emotions for yourself.

So how do you write about love without writing about love?

I can think of two main things you can try. The first, as I've implied, is to inject some reality into the poem. How does she smell? how does she walk? where did you meet her?

For example, this is from Ted Hughes's poem St Botolph's, describing his first meeting with Sylvia Plath (who he later married).

“Girl-friend like a loaded crossbow. The sound-waves
Jammed and torn by Joe Lyde's Jazz. The hall
Like the tilting deck of the Titanic:
A silent film, with that blare over it. Suddenly –
Lucas engineered it – suddenly you.
First sight. First snapshot isolated
Unalterable, stilled in the camera's glare.
Taller
Than ever you were again. Swaying so slender
It seemed your long, perfect, American legs
Simply went on up. That flaring hand,
Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant-fingers.
And the face – a tight ball of joy.
I see you there, clearer, more real
Than in any of the years in its shadow –
As if I saw you that once, then never again.”

It doesn't necessarily need to be details about her – just invoking a real context for your poem will immediately make it more vivid. This is Politics by W. B. Yeats –

“How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.”

The other approach that poets have used over the centuries is metaphor. Rather than simply telling us you're in love, find some comparison – what's the experience like? For example, from Symptoms of Love by Robert Graves –

“Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.”

Surely that's better than just saying 'love is so intense, it makes it hard to think clearly'?

This poem, Ah, Love, by Linda Pastan, uses the metaphor of a knifethrower to communicate the vulnerability of the lover –

Ah, Love

you expert
knifethrower, outlining my body

with your gleaming blades
as I stand trembling here

against the bedroom wall.
I was distracted

for months by the color
of your flowers,

by all your flowery
words, for where you come from

it is always tropical.
Now I am ready for you

to do your worst. Look,
I am opening my blouse--here

is my uncovered heart.
Just aim for it.

In a Nutshell

Don’t fall in love if you are not ready to write a good love poem.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 20/5/2006

On Metaphor
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

Essentially, any time you imbue a person, an object, an event, an ideology / philosophy, or any kind of abstraction with characteristics other than what they literally have, or have them perform actions they cannot literally do, you have created a metaphor. As long as both parts of the comparison are there, in whole or implied, you have built a pattern in the form of a metaphor.

When a poet drops a metaphor (or a simile) into a single line of poetry, most often he is after a single clear point of resemblance between the two things compared; in such cases, it isn't necessary that the vehicle (that which is used for comparative purposes) and the tenor (that which is actually being talked about) correspond in every detail, and often there is only a single point that is important.

For instance, when Keats says,

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,"

The only point of similarity he's interested in between an astronomer's discovering a new planet and his reading Chapman's Homer is the excitement of discovery; the word "felt" clearly emphasizes that single point as the important one. Keats makes nothing of any other potential similarities, e.g., that reading and astronomical observation are both essentially solitary activities, nor do they need to be shown or even to exist for the metaphor to be successful in achieving what it was intended to.

Certainly, it's to the writer's advantage if his metaphor possesses more than a single dimension for example Pope's couplet

“Tis with our judgements as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.”

Here, he makes use of two points of similarity: first, that no two clocks or watches keep exactly the same time (i. e., metaphorically, no two individuals use exactly the same standards for measuring value); and, second, that each of us relies on his own watch rather than someone else's (i. e., each of us trusts his own judgment rather than someone else's). Again, one could find other points of similarity but Pope doesn't emphasize those in any way, so that they (or any differences, as well), are unimportant in context. Usually, as here with Pope, the poet will give us some degree of guidance as to which correspondences are those we should pay attention to and, by implication of the unstated, which we should ignore. Good metaphor should work on many levels, both in sound and sense. No point using a metaphor for colour when colour is the only reason you use it.

In each of these cases, the writer begins with an abstract idea, which he then presents in concrete terms through the metaphor he has chosen. Basically, the more central to a poem a particular metaphor is, the greater should be the correspondence between tenor and vehicle. The metaphor should ad subtext, deeper meaning, new interpretations, or interesting double entendres. At the very least, it should work on one primary level of sense and on the level of sound.

In a Nutshell

When building a pattern through metaphor, these are the things you should always keep in mind:

1) What kind of primary connections does the comparison establish? By primary, I mean what are the first connections that immediately pop to mind? Invariably, they are usually visual. However, when building a metaphor, remember we have five senses, and the best patterns work with more than one of them. If you can make a comparison that builds visuals as well as taste, touch, smell, and/or sound, you're off to a good start.

2) What kind of secondary patterns does the metaphor create? By this I mean, beyond the sensory, what similarities do these two objects share? What behaviors? What qualities? Do they? If they don't, then the metaphor is weak.

3) Looking at the primary and secondary patterns you've built with your metaphor, do they make sense, or have you mixed metaphors? Have you imbued characteristics into half of your metaphor that it simply doesn't possess? Did you compare a snake to human flexibility, and then have the snake dance a jig? A metaphor needs consistency to work. Otherwise, it's likely you've chosen the wrong things to compare and build your pattern, or you're not looking clearly at the qualities each half of your metaphor possesses, but rather already had a set idea in your head and picked the wrong metaphor to advance that idea.

4) Last, and most important, do all of these primary, secondary, even tertiary comparisons add to the theme and intent of your poem? Do they advance it? Or is it clutter? Look at every possible similarity in sensory and behavioral connections in your metaphor. All of the connections between the two things being compared count, not just the ones you want to count. For example if you compare tourists to tropical birds because you want to indicate that they are colourful, restless and noisy, the comparison will automatically suggest other things - that they are decorative, harmless, fragile perhaps. Which might be appropriate or it might not. And you can't assume that they'll have the same ideas as you - you might be thinking of parrots and toucans and the reader might think of hummingbirds.

Additional Note:

A mixed metaphor would be a case of comparing an object or concept to one thing, then finishing the metaphor with an action or characteristic unrelated to the initial metaphor. If you compare your car to a lemon abut then have the lemon fly, you’ve got yourself a mixed metaphor.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 20/5/2006

Extended Metaphor
(Taken from Blurbs of Wisdom, modified version)

Metaphors are very effective ways of developing ideas in poems; one special form, the "extended metaphor," can be particularly effective in certain situations. An extended metaphor is a comparison that provides the basis for an entire poem or for a lengthy section of a poem; its value lies in keeping the reader's attention focused on a single clear image while at the same time allowing the writer to develop a number of different aspects of an idea.

For instance, look at "The Hound" by Robert Francis:

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.
I cannot tell
The hound's intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.

The poem begins by equating "life" and "the hound" and creating a clear image of the dog running towards the speaker (thereby giving tangible substance to the otherwise abstract "life" ). The speaker cannot determine the dog's intention--whether it will attack or warmly greet--because its appearance is the same in either case. Only once things have progressed past the point where the speaker can effectively react does he learn which was the dog's intention, so that all he can do is to wait in uncertainty to learn which it is to be. By grounding the entire poem in a single specific, concrete, commonplace occurrence, Francis is able to generalize about "life" without resorting to vague abstractions.

Similarly, A. R. Ammons uses a single extended metaphor in "Coming To" to summarize the life of that poem's speaker:

Like a steel drum
cast at sea
my days,
banged and dented
by a found shore of
ineradicable realities,
sandsunk, finally, gaping,
rustsunk in
compass grass.

Although the speaker directly tells us none of the literal details of his life, we know from the comparison to the steel drum that his life has been a difficult one of aimless, directionless drifting that is about to reach its end just as the drum has at last randomly washed up on a shore and is beached, rusting away uselessly as it is being buried by the beach sands, ironically surrounded by "compass grass" which suggests that only now in approaching death is its direction at last clear.

Of course, probably the most famous of all extended metaphors in poetry is John Donne's comparison of the souls of the two separated lovers to the two legs of a compass that are not in truth actually ever separated:

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, make no show
To move, but doth, if th'other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th'other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Here, Donne develops just about every possible detail of the compass and shows its various correspondences to the separated lovers.

With an extended metaphor, the poet is often able to explore a number of connections between the metaphor and that which it represents, broadening and deepening the significance.

In a Nutshell

A good metaphor is sure hard to crack.

Contributed by Dead Poet
Updated on 20/5/2006