Comments on: Making Metaphors

By: Shawna

Shawna — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 05:11:16 +0000

In my writing, the best metaphors occur accidentally, haphazardly, naturally, without thought or care for how they arrive.

By: Rethabile

Rethabile — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:33:58 +0000

This one of Spender has to be one of my favourites: "the watching of cripples pass With limbs shaped like questions In their odd twist." And if I may share a link to the poem in which the lines appear... Sir Stephen Spender jb says: Thanks for that, Rethabile. And for the link also. It's good to have things in context.

By: Penny Calendars

Penny Calendars — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:28:40 +0000

Death is a distant rumor to the young. Andrew A. Rooney

This could not be more true. I wish that I to could write half as well as what your other commentators do here JB, this is site is uplifting and enjoyable.

jb says: Thanks, Penny. Flattery will get you everywhere.

By: Cathy @ 3 at 1 Copying

Cathy @ 3 at 1 Copying — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:40:41 +0000

“A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman is a dreamer. A woman is a planner. A woman is a maker, and a molder. A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman builds bridges. A woman makes children and makes cars. A woman writes poetry and songs. A woman is a person who makes choices.” Eleanor Holmes Norton

I just love this one and it completely true in all accounts, this is one thing that I was never good at in school, that being poetry, as much as I did in fact love reading it and comprehending the meaning behind it all.

By: Gary J

Gary J — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:13:39 +0000

Metaphors are not as easily created as they are learned. I love your example of metaphor in Orwell’s Animal Farm, I believe that is a great use of the metaphorical language. Shakespeare used a great deal of metaphors as well. I agree with a previous commenter who advised to read more poetry. Metaphors will come more naturally if you start learning to think in them.

By: john baker

john baker — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:33:23 +0000

It seems like a Jungian synchronicity, but Jacob Russell, on his Barking Dog blog brings some quotations from Robert Musil's novel, The Man Without Qualities, where Musil talks about figurative language. There are several insights in this piece and if you're interested in the metaphor you should read the whole article, but this is the one that struck me:

These two basic strategies, the figurative and the unequivocal, have been distinguishable ever since the beginnings of humanity. Single-mindedness is the law of all waking thought and action, as much present in a compelling logical conclusion as in the mind of the blackmailer who enforces his will on his victim step by step, and it arises from the exigencies of life where only the single-minded control of circumstances can avert disaster. Metaphor, by contrast, is like the image that fuses several meanings in a dream; it is the gliding logic of the soul, corresponding to the way things relate to each other in the intuitions of art and religion. [...] No doubt what is called the higher humanism is only the effort to fuse together these two great halves of life, metaphor and truth, once they have been carefully distinguished from each other. But once one has distinguished everything in a metaphor that might be true from what is mere froth, one usually has gained a little truth, but at the cost of destroying the whole value of the metaphor. The extraction of the truth...has had the same effect of boiling down a liquid to thicken it, while the really vital juices and elements escape in a cloud of steam. It is often hard, nowadays, to avoid the impression that the concepts and rules of the moral life are only metaphors that have been boield to death, with the revolting greasy kitchen vapors of humanism billowing around the corpses.

By: Dick

Dick — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:54:44 +0000

(Gulp!) Thanks, boys. Walking tall here too now.

By: SpaceAgeSage

SpaceAgeSage — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:52:14 +0000

I grew up on a farm, lived in the mountains of Colorado for years, and taught the martial arts for a long time. The result is I see metaphors everywhere. They leap out at me all the time because I use them to connect with others. What better way to teach than to take a subject someone knows (ex. home construction) and turn it into a metaphor so they can understand more easily (“A karate stance is like the foundation of a building …”).

jb says: Thanks for that, SAS. A teacher is always on the way.