Metaphors aren't merely the candy sprinkles on the doughnut of language, not just embellishments to the music of poetry and prose. Metaphors are ways of thinking--and also ways of shaping the thoughts of others.
All of us, every day, speak and write and think in metaphors. In fact, it's hard to imagine how we'd get by without them. And because figurative comparisons lie at the heart of language and thought, they have been pinned down and picked apart by scholars in a wide variety of disciplines.
Of course, everyone knows what happens when gangs of professors set about to study a subject intensely. They analyze, classify, describe, explain, evaluate, and inevitably rename whatever it is they have been looking at.
And so it's been with metaphors. There are now countless ways of looking at them, thinking about them, using them. But in deference to the metaphorical blackbirds of Wallace Stevens, here are just 13 of them.
- Absolute Metaphor
A metaphor in which one of the terms (the tenor) can't be readily distinguished from the other (the vehicle). - Complex Metaphor
A metaphor in which the literal meaning is expressed through more than one figurative term (a combination of primary metaphors). - Conceptual Metaphor
A metaphor in which one idea (or conceptual domain) is understood in terms of another. - Conventional Metaphor
A familiar comparison that doesn't call attention to itself as a figure of speech. - Creative Metaphor
An original comparison that does call attention to itself as a figure of speech. - Dead Metaphor
A figure of speech that has lost its force and imaginative effectiveness through frequent use. - Extended Metaphor
A comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem. - Mixed Metaphor
A succession of incongruous or ludicrous comparisons. - Primary Metaphor
A basic, intuitively understood metaphor--such as KNOWING IS SEEING or TIME IS MOTION--that may be combined with other primary metaphors to produce complex metaphors. - Root Metaphor
An image, narrative, or fact that shapes an individual's perception of the world and interpretation of reality. - Submerged Metaphor
A type of metaphor in which one of the terms (either the vehicle or tenor) is implied rather than stated explicitly. - Therapeutic Metaphor
A metaphor used by a therapist to assist a client in the process of personal transformation. - Visual Metaphor
The representation of a person, place, thing, or idea by way of a visual image that suggests a particular association or point of similarity.
Regardless of the types of metaphors you favor, keep in mind Aristotle's observation in Rhetoric: "Those words are most pleasant which give us new knowledge. Strange words have no meaning for us; common terms we know already; it is metaphor which gives us most of this pleasure."
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When Paul Simon writes, “I am a rock. I am an island,” we know that he is not penning a literal truth. Rocks and islands don’t write or sing songs; however, the objects selected convey meaning that has more emotional appeal than any literary self-description. Compare, for instance, “I am a male of species Homo sapiens. I am tough, enduring and without sentiment or sensation. I am cut off from others like myself and have no need for or knowledge of abstractions such as love, fellowship, pain or pleasure.”
Simon’s metaphors pack more punch because of their brevity and the requirement of imaginative participation by the reader or listener. Similes, which use the words like, as, or than, do not have the same impact. Compare “I am like a rock and in a larger sense like an island.”
Metaphors can also be implied rather than boldly stated. When the poet e e cummings writes of “The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls,” the reader understands how these very proper women have souls and minds that are comparable to apartments that someone else has outfitted with the appropriate furniture. In other words, they unquestionably accept and espouse feelings and attitudes not generated by themselves but bottled or tinned and supplied by society.
Often a metaphor can extend through several sentences or even paragraphs of prose or the entirety of a poem. In her poem about the joys of reading and literature, Emily Dickinson creates an extended metaphor comparing books to modes of transportation.
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
The artistry lies in the connotative evocations of her word choices. “Frigate” is more effective than, say, “tugboat,” a two-syllable word that denotes a type of watercraft, because the former imports warlike adventure and speed not associated with the latter.
In the same way “coursers” is more effective than “horses”; “prancing” works better than “romping” or “bouncing,” “chariot” better than “moving van,” “bears” better than “lugs.”
A caution when employing metaphors is not to mix them unless you are aiming at a comic effect. Recently a major political figure said that a “smoking gun” was a “mushroom cloud.” His serious intended meaning was rendered laughable by the unintended incongruity of the images.
Also, certain metaphors have become clichés because of overuse. Suppose a character in a book or play were to deliver the line “You’re skating on thin ice and are liable to end up in the soup,” what impression would you derive of the person’s intelligence?
I never deliberately utilize Metaphors. They seem
to simply show up. Usually in my poetry. I feel I
would not be comfortable expressing personal
thoughts without the disguise of a Metaphor. I
believe Metaphors offer a short cut more easily
understood by others. When I was a kid and had
just met and ‘fallen’ ‘madly’ in love with my now
deceased husband, Mentor Huebner, an artist, I
wrote a love poem to him. I don’t know how else I
could have written my intentions without using
Metaphors. Without them, a romantic notion might have seemed rather ‘corny’. Without the Metaphors it might have taken many more lines to not quite say what I meant.
“FULL BEAM”
If you be Jupiter
Oh pray let me be Mars.
Let me be Heaven
To display your brilliant Stars.
Let me be Sleep
So you could be my Dream.
And I would even be the Darkness
To give your Moon Full Beam.
I LOVE your small banner at the beginning of this blog (which I’ve forwarded–the blog, that is–to others; thanks for more helpful info): “Metaphors be with you”; very cute!