Metaphor

Every occupation has tools. The tools of the poet are words. In sharing emotions, stories, feelings or moments, words are the tools used by poets to forge images in our minds. Words are selected and fashioned by poets in a numbers of ways to form such images. One of the most commonly used methods of drawing images through words is known as metaphor. A metaphor is figure of speech where a word or phrase is used to designate an image, mood, tone, or other reference through comparison. As Sylvia Plath p. 30) asserts, "Poets are m`sters of image, drawing vivid scenes in as little as two words." In The Best American Poetry (2004), Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman present a number of poets and poems that illustrated the use of metaphor to achieve such outcomes.

Ironically, perhaps the poem that most relies upon and most repeats the use of metaphor in The Best American Poetry is Marc Jaffee's "King of Repetition." In this poem, the speaker seems to feel he cannot create anything new. He begins and ends his address by saying "I am none but king of repetition�I am none but composition." In this poem the speaker seems to be

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Category: Arts - M