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iness

In case you haven't puzzled it out, this curio by the typographically eccentric poet E.E. Cummings (or, as he preferred, e.e. cummings) is a compact metaphor. Not only is he associating loneliness with the falling of a leaf, but he's also visualizing the experience by isolating letters as they fall down the page.

In Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing, we consider how these figures of speech are far more than just ornaments or decorative accessories. Metaphors are also ways of thinking, offering our readers (and ourselves) fresh ways of examining ideas and of viewing the world around us.

You can't avoid metaphors: they're built right into the language. In fact, the word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek word meaning "to carry across."

And metaphors are certainly not the exclusive property of poets. Consider E.B. White's use of a musical metaphor in the essay "Once More to the Lake" to dramatize the arrival of a summer storm:

This was the big scene, still the big scene. The whole thing was so familiar, the first feeling of oppression and heat and a general air around camp of not wanting to go very far away. In mid-afternoon (it was all the same) a curious darkening of the sky, and a lull in everything that had made life tick; and then the way the boats suddenly swung the other way at their moorings with the coming of a breeze out of the new quarter, and the premonitory rumble. Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills.

You'll find White's metaphorically rich essay in our Essay Sampler: Models of Good Writing (Part Two). After enjoying "Once More to the Lake," why not try your hand (and head) at fashioning a few metaphors of your own?

RELATED:

• Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing
• Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing (Part Two)
• Essay Sampler: Models of Good Writing (Part Two)