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Reading Outline
Page
Review
Speaker 2
Dramatic Situation 2
Figure 3
Figures of Resemblance
Simile 3
Metaphor 4
Symbol 5
Figures of Substitution
Synecdoche 6
Metonymy 6
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SPEAKER. Di Yanni and Rompf say, “In reading a poem, the first thing we hear is the voice of
its speaker. In listening to the speaker we gain a sense of his or her circumstance and situation.
We learn, that is, what the speaker is talking about, how he or she feels about it, and why. Our
first concern, therefore, is to determine who we are listening to, what is happening, and how is
the speaker affected by it.” Who is the speaker? When we read a poem whose “voice” speaks to
us? Kennedy and Gioia say “The poet’s is one possible answer; and in the case of many a poem
that answer may be right . . . In order to read a poem, we seldom need to read a poet’s
biography; but in truth there are certain poems whose full effect depends upon our knowing at
least a fact or two of the poet’s life.” “In other poems” though, Kennedy and Gioia go on to say,
“the speaker is obviously a persona, a fictitious character: not the poet, but the poet’s creation.”
Thus, to the question who is speaking, there are two logical answers: either the poet or a persona.
It is the poet, especially when we know a thing or two about the poet’s biography. But as Hirsch
suggests, it is safest to assume in all—if not most cases—that it is a persona of the poet whose
selfhood is still in the making.
DRAMATIC SITUATION. The story matter of the poem. In other words: what is happening in
the dramatic present—the now, the present tense—of the poem? This is what Perrine calls the
“occasion” of the utterance of the speaker. Kennedy and Gioia suggest a helpful strategy in
answering this question: “Try to paraphrase the poem as a whole.” In paraphrasing, “we put
into our own words what we understand the poem to say, restating ideas that seem essential,
coming out and stating what the poem may only suggest.”
IMAGE AND STATEMENT. In Nine Gates, Hirshfield distinguishes between two kinds of
poems. There are poems of pure statement, bare of outward sensory image. The language
employed in such poems is usually ratiocinative, abstract, and nonphysical, hence direct-
speaking in effect. (Others also call this kind of language direct speech or telling.) On the other
hand, there are poems driven by images. Images, in contrast to statements, employ a language
usually sensory (associated with the body’s senses as opposed to the mind’s), concrete, and
physical. (Others also call this kind of language indirect speech or showing.) Compare the two
poems below. Which poem is “statement-driven,” which “image-driven”?
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FIGURE. A figure in literature, is an expression that departs from the accepted literal sense of
words. Here, we are going to concern ourselves with figures of speech—also called tropes—that
extend the meaning of the poem beyond the literal. These tropes allow us to find connections
between one thing or action and another, the abstract and the concrete, the familiar and the
strange. It is through these tropes that poetry enables us to alter the way we look at things or to
discover what the poem wants to show us. For our purposes here, we divide the figures the
following way: figures of resemblance (simile, metaphor, and symbol), figures of substitution
(synecdoche and metonymy), figures of contradiction (paradox and irony), and other figures
(synaesthesia, personification, understatement, hyperbole, pun).
SIMILE. The explicit comparison of one thing to another. Explicit, because the comparison is
indicated by some connective, usually like, as, than, or a verb such as resembles. But while a
simile expresses similarity, it still demands that the things it compares are dissimilar in kind.
“Your fingers are like mine” is not a simile; it is a literal observation. But “Your fingers are like
sausages” is one. Thus, simile asserts a likeness between unlike things and maintains their
compatibility, but it also draws attention to their differences, thus affirming a state of division.
For instance, this statement: “For you, my love, I will be like water.” Even though the persona in
this statement compares himself to water, the water exists only on a figurative plane.
Furthermore, the persona retains his own distinct (though unspecified) shape, and the poem
does not invite us to confuse one image with another. Read the poems below. In each poem,
what two things are being compared? What similarity is asserted between them?
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METAPHOR. Now omit the connective in the simile—like, as, etc.—and the result is a
metaphor. Metaphor describes one thing in terms of another. That is, a statement that one thing
is something else, which, in a literal sense, it is not. The metaphor, then, is a collision—or
collusion—in the identification of different things. The effect of a metaphor is not the same as
the effect of a simile. One, there is a radical difference between saying that A is B versus saying
that A is like B. Metaphor, then, is the more intense form of comparison. And, two, a simile
refers to only one characteristic that two things have in common, while metaphor is not limited
in the number of resemblances it may indicate. To use the simile “He eats like a pig” is to
compare man and animal in one respect: eating habits. But to say “He’s a pig,” is to use a
metaphor that might involve comparisons of appearance and morality as well. Thus we can say
metaphor covers more ground than simile, and is potentially more ambiguous (but still more
intense) than simile.
In summary:
Oh, my love is like a red, red rose. Simile
Oh, my love is redder than a rose. Simile
Oh, my love is a red, red rose. Metaphor
Oh, my love has red petals and sharp thorns. Implied
Metaphor
Oh, I placed my love into a long-stem vase
and I bandaged my bleeding thumb. Implied
Metaphor
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SYMBOL. A typical metaphor has an A-is-B pattern, as in “life is a dream.” In such a pattern
the focus is on the A; we are being told more about the nature of life than about the nature of
dreams. We also saw in metaphor the B is likely to be better known, more concrete, more of a
sense image than the A, and exists only on a figurative plane (i.e. it is not really there in the
represented world of the poem). The symbol, an image that stands for more than it denotes
literally, is like metaphor in that it transfers meaning from one thing to another. But with
symbol, the current of interest is reversed: Our concern is directed from the first term to the
second. The A is better known, more concrete, more a sense image than what should be the B—
which is often an abstraction the user does not even identify. If the poet mentions a rose, but is
really thinking of the nature of beauty, then rose is a symbol of beauty. If the poet mentions
being halfway along a road, but has in mind a thirty-fifth birthday, then road is a symbol of the
life span. If rose and road are seen as symbols, there is no need to refer to beauty or age at all; we
will sense that something more is intended than a real rose or a real road. If we think of the
metaphoric process as “A is B,” we might think of the symbolic one as “A is X,” with the X
usually unidentified, though clues are given to its identity. Symbolic images often are physical
objects: a hill, a well, a river. They exist in the literal plane of the poem. Because symbol differs
from metaphor in that its application is usually left open as an unstated suggestion. A symbol,
then, allows for a broader range of interpretations. Despite that, one should still remain
sensitive to the clues or nuances present in the poem, so that one does not run the risk of over-
reading or endowing upon the symbol an idea it does not, in the first place, ask for. Read the
following poems. Which contain only metaphor/s? Which contain symbol/s
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THE NEGLECTED WIFE
Yi Talch’ung (Korea)
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[IF IT WERE A SEA, THIS IMMENSE WIND]
Maria Luisa Spaziani (Italy)
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