Hey pretty
girls!
Figurative Language
Cool as a Cucumber
I love poetry!
Figurative Language
Figurative language is the use of
words outside their literal or usual
meaning to add beauty or force.
A figure of speech may be said to
occur whenever a speaker or writer,
for the sake of freshness or
emphasis, departs from the usual
denotations of words.
It is characterized by the use of
similes and metaphors
Literal language vs. figurative
language
• Literal language is meaning exactly what
you say: “Go jump in a lake!”
• Figurative language is saying one thing
and meaning another: “Go jump in a lake!”
• Poetry relies heavily on figurative
language.
Personification
Metaphor
Simile
Imagery
Aural imagery
• alliteration
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia
Symbol
Personification
Metaphor
Simile
Imagery
Aural imagery
• alliteration
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia
Symbol
Similecomparison using
the words ‘like’ or
‘as’
Examples
“It's been a hard day's night, and
I've been working like a dog.”
- The Beatles
“My heart is like an open highway.”
- Jon Bon Jovi
A simile expresses a similarity. Still, for a
simile to exist, the things compared have to
be dissimilar in kind. It is no simile to say,
“Your fingers are like mine,” it is a literal
observation. But to say, “Your fingers are
like sausages” is to use a simile. Omit the
connective– say, “Your fingers are
sausages” – and the result is a metaphor, a
statement where one thing is spoken of as
though it were something else, which, in a
literal sense, it is not.
Simile
“Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out
against the sky,
Like a patient etherized upon a
table;”
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S.Eliot
Your Turn
As black as...
As light as a...
As clean as a...
As hungry as a...
As proud as a...
As heavy as...
Be creative in your choice of
comparison
Similes
As black as...
Coal
As light as a...
Feather
As clean as a...
Whistle
As quick as a...
Flash
As hungry as a... Wolf
As proud as a...
Peacock
As sharp as a...
Needle
As heavy as...
Lead
Like a bull in a.. China shop
Being stood up is like being the last fruit on the
tree, left to wither through the winter
Feeling angry is like carrying a volcano in the
pit of your stomach that threatens to erupt at
any moment
The leaves fell from the tree like a thousand
paratroopers leaping into battle behind
enemy lines
A Simile Poem
By Stanley Cook
Like the white curls from a gigantic beard
Drifting across the barber’s shop floor
In the breeze from the open door;
Like the broken parts of the ice flow
Afloat on the blue of the ocean,
Drifting southward from the Pole;
Like a heavily laden treasure fleet
In a light wind on the calm sea,
Hardly moving with all sails set;
Like suds of foam from the waterfall
That lathers the rocks at its foot,
Gliding over a tranquil pool;
Like wool from a fleece,
Like smoke from a fire,
Like islands in the sky.
Like the white curls from a gigantic beard
Drifting across the barber’s shop floor
In the breeze from the open door;
Like the broken parts of the ice flow
Afloat on the blue of the ocean,
Drifting southward from the Pole;
Like a heavily laden treasure fleet
In a light wind on the calm sea,
Hardly moving with all sails set;
Like suds of foam from the waterfall
That lathers the rocks at its foot,
Gliding over a tranquil pool;
Like wool from a fleece,
Like smoke from a fire,
Like islands in the sky.
Similes in Rap
• "My rhymes are like shot clocks,
interstate cops and blood clots,
my point is your flow gets stopped."
- Talib Kweli on "Hater Players," Mos Def and Talib
Kweli Are Blackstar
• "Throwing out the wicked like God did the devil,
funky like your grandpa's drawers, don't test me,
we're in like that, you're dead like Presley."
- Q-Tip on "Steve Biko," Midnight Marauders
"Me without a mic is like a beat without a snare...
I'm sweet like licorice, dangerous like syphilis."
- Lauryn Hill on "How Many Mics," The Score
"Coming from the deep black like the Loch Ness,
now bring apocalypse like the Heart of Darkness."
- Talib Kweli on "We Got the Beat," The Beautiful
Struggle
"You stopping us is preposterous
like an androgynous misogynist,
you picking the wrong time, stepping to me when
I'm in my prime like Optimus, Transforming..."
- Talib Kweli on "Twice Inna Lifetime," Mos Def and
Talib Kweli Are Blackstar
Your Turn—Use a
simile to describe
the following
M.S. Merwin
Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
Underline the simile and explain its meaning.
Name the Title - D.H.
Lawrence
Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at
the light, and falling back
Wings like bits of Umbrella
Hanging upside down like rows of
disgusting old rags
And grinning in their sleep
Swallows with spools of dark thread
sewing the shadows together
BATS
“ Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”
• Muhammad Ali
Your turn-Portfolio Poem #2
Write a poem between12-15 lines that
uses two similes. You may write on
any theme but here is a suggestion.
Consider the phrase “love is like. . .”
Think about the love is like to you,
and write a poem comparing love to
an object, experience—anything you
want.
Her skin is as fair as
porcelain.
Her eyes are piercing
daggers.
Her lips are plump and
luscious.
Her feet are sailboats taking
her around the world.
Her brain is a melting pot full
of different images.
Her body is a temple
preserved and beautiful.
-Katie
Personification
Metaphor
Simile
Imagery
Aural imagery
• alliteration
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia
Symbol
Metaphor – direct
comparison
without using the
words ‘like’ or ‘as’
Metaphor
“The greater part of untested men
appeared quiet and absorbed. They
were going to look at the war, the red
animal- the blood-swollen god.”
The Red Badge of
CourageStephen Crane
MY LIFE IS A DREAM
My life is a dream,
like a tiger waking
up from her deep sleep.
My life is like a dream,
it's all up to me.
Explain this metaphor
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
Shakespeare -- As You Like It
What season are you?
What animal are you?
Musical Instrument?
Piece of Furniture?
How is a wave like a mountain?
Use a metaphor to describe
this wave
• Hokusai – ‘The Wave’
You know a dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows.
And a dreamer's just a vessel that must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what's behind you and never knowing what's in store
makes each day a constant battle just to stay between the shores.
And I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry.
Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky.
I'll never reach my destination if I never try,
So I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry.
Too many times we stand aside and let the water slip away.
To what we put off 'til tomorrow has now become today.
So don't you sit upon the shore and say you're satisfied.
Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tides
-ChorusThere's bound to be rough waters, and I know I'll take some
falls(understood challenges).
With the good Lord as my captain, I can make it through them all.
( understood God guides him in reaching his dream just like a captain guides
a vessel)
-Chorus-
The River
You know a dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows.
And a dreamer's just a vessel that must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what's behind you and never knowing what's in store
makes each day a constant battle just to stay between the shores.
And I will sail my vessel (understood – live my dream) 'til the river
runs dry.
Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky.
I'll never reach my destination if I never try,
So I will sail my vessel 'til the river runs dry.
Too many times we stand aside and let the water slip away.
To what we put off 'til tomorrow has now become today(understood—we
procrastinate.
So don't you sit upon the shore (understood – be a bystander) and say
you're satisfied.
Choose to chance the rapids (understood - taking chances) and dare to
dance the tides (understood – live life).
-Chorus-
There's bound to be rough waters, and I know I'll take some falls(understood
challenges).
With the good Lord as my captain, I can make it through them all.
( understood God guides him in reaching his dream just like a captain
guides a vessel)
-Chorus-
The Rose by Bette Middler
• Underline the metaphors
Some say love, it is a river
that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
and you its only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
who cannot seem to give,
and the soul afraid of dyin'
that never learns to live.
When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long (understood – life has been hard),
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong,
just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed that with the sun's love
in the spring becomes the rose (understood – rose is love).
Some say love, it is a river
that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
and you its only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
who cannot seem to give,
and the soul afraid of dyin'
that never learns to live.
When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long (understood – life has been hard),
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong,
just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed that with the sun's love
in the spring becomes the rose (understood – rose is love).
Norm Nicholson
And chiselled clear on stone,
A spider-web of shell,
The thumbprint of the sea
May Swenson
On silent hinges
Open-folds her wings
Applauding hands
Phoebe Hesketh
Giraffe-talk, gormless somehow
Heads hanging
Over the next garden
Gareth Owen
Boredom Is clouds
Black as old slate
Chucking rain straight
On our Housing Estate
All grey Day long.
Metaphor for a Family
My family lives inside a medicine chest:
Dad is the super-size band aid, strong and powerful
but not always effective in a crisis.
Mom is the middle-size tweezers,
which picks and pokes and pinches.
David is the single small aspirin on the third shelf,
sometimes ignored.
Muffin, the sheep dog, is a round cotton ball,
stained and dirty, that pops off the shelf and
bounces in my way as I open the door.
And I am the wood and glue which hold us all
together with my love.
By: Belinda
Fifth of July
My family is an expired firecracker
set off by the blowtorch of divorce. We lay scattered
in many directions.
My father is the wick, badly burnt but still glowing
softly.
My mother is the blackened paper fluttering down,
blowing this way and that, unsure where to land.
My sister is the fallen, colorful parachute,
lying in a tangled knot, unable to see the beauty she
holds.
My brother is the fresh, untouched powder that
was protected from the flame. And I,
I am the singed, outside papers, curled away
from everything, silently cursing the blowtorch.
Your turn—Portfolio Poem #
3
Write a poem about your family
describing the members using
metaphors. Your poem should be an
extended metaphor
My family is a (your metaphor)
My father is (metaphor)
My mother is (metaphor)
I am (metaphor)
You get the idea
Similes and Metaphors
• Oh, my love is like a red, red rose
OR
My lover’s cheeks are like red roses
• My lover’s cheeks are red roses
OR
Oh, my love is a red, red rose.
Simile or Metaphor? ? ?
1. My thoughts no longer hover. . . Resting their
wings.
2. Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer, Drinker of
horizon’s fluid line.
3. Boy, you are a wrecking ball, crashing into me.
4. I will speak daggers to her.
5. The pen is mightier than the sword.
6. Her smile is like a ray of sunshine
7. O thy love’s like a red, red rose
Answers
1. My thoughts no longer hover. . . Resting their
wings--Metaphor
2. Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer, Drinker of
horizon’s fluid line--Metaphor
3. Boy, you are a wrecking ball, crashing into me-Metaphor
4. I will speak daggers to her --Metaphor
5. The pen is mightier than the sword--Metaphor
6. Her smile is like a ray of sunshine—Simile
7. O thy love’s like a red, red rose--Simile
Your Turn
Use a metaphor to describe one of the following
as a phrase or line.
•
•
•
•
•
London Underground
Boots
A rhinoceros
A hive of bees
Fog
Color Poem for Portfolio # 4
Color poems use your imagination and senses to
investigate a subject. The focus of the poem is on
using similes and metaphors. Similes compare
two unlike things using with words “like” or “as.”
For example: "The lake is like a whirlpool."
Metaphors are like similes without using the
word "like" or “as.”
They state that one thing is something else. An
example of a metaphor is “The lake is a
whirlpool.”
Line 1: ________ (color) is
Color Poem
Line 2: ________ (color) is
Line 3: ________ (color) is
Line 4: ________ (color) is
Line 5: ________ (color) smells like
Line 6: ________ (color) tastes like
Line 7: ________ (color) sounds like
Line 8: ________ (color) looks like
Line 9: ________ (color) feels like
Line 10: ________ (color) makes me
Line 11: ________ (color) is
Blue is the color of the sky.
Blue is the waves in the ocean.
Blue is the feeling I get sometimes.
Blue is the icy color of glacial snow.
Blue smells like freshly washed bed sheets.
Blue tastes like freshly squeezed blueberries.
Blue sounds like jets flying through the clouds.
Blue looks like the clear waters of the Hawaiian waters as I’m snorkeling.
Blue feels like the snow while I’m skiing at Mt. Bachelor.
Blue makes me want to put on my coat, hat and gloves.
Blue is a state of being
Five senses poems use your senses to study or investigate a subject. #4 Five Senses
The focus of the poem is on using similes. Similes are comparisons
Poem
between two unlike things using with words “like” or “as.”
Directions:
Line 1. Tell what color an emotion or idea looks like to you.
Line 2. Tell what the emotion or idea tastes like (imagine it has a taste)
Line 3. Tell what the emotion or idea sounds like.
Line 4. Tell what emotion or idea smells like.
Line 5. Tell what the emotion or idea looks like.
Line 6. Tell how the emotion or idea makes you feel.
Examples:
Summer is yellow.
It tastes like lemonade.
It sounds like kids splashing in a lake.
It smells like dandelions.
It looks like boating.
It makes me feel overjoyed.
Rain is clear.
It tastes like water.
It sounds like pounding on your windows.
It smells like fresh pine trees.
It looks like dew drops on plants.
It makes me feel cool.
Personification
Simile
Imagery
Aural Imagery
Symbol
Metaphor
Simile
Metaphor
• Imagery
Aural Imagery
Symbol
Personification: Giving
human qualities to
objects and animals
Personification
The moon gazed on my
midnight labors,
While, with unrelaxed and
breathless eagerness, I
pursued nature to her
hiding- places
-Mary Shelley
Frankenstein
The Wind
James Stephens (1882-1950)
The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and
Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand
And said he’d kill an kill and kill,
And so he will and so he will
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The angry clouds marched across the sky.
The lonely train whistle cried out in the night.
The hungry chainsaw growled loudly.
The stubborn dense fog swallowed us.
The evening stars winked at me from the sky.
Which is the grumpiest?
Which is the wisest?
He who owns the
whistle, rules the world
“January wind and the sun playing truant again.
Rain beginning to scratch its fingernails across
the blackboard sky.”
“O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out. .
.”
Excerpt from Roger McGough
The Moon
Percy Shelley
And, like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, lead by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
Your turn
Personify the following:
The house is quiet now
The Vacuum
The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,
Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth
Grinning into the floor, maybe at my
Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.
I’ve lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul
Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear
To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust
And the woolen mice, and begin to howl
Because there is old filth everywhere
She used to crawl, in corner and under the stair.
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on and howls, biting at air.
What is the speaker’s attitude about
housework?
Your Turn—Portfolio Poem #5
Use personification to bring one of the following
to life:
Water
Stars
Sun
Tree
A dentist’s chair
Cell phone
Anything
Your poem should be at least 8 lines long
Personify it!!
“Hope, thou bold taster of delight”
Richard Crashaw
“Memory, that exquisite blunderer”
Amy Clampitt
Your Turn—Portfolio Poem #6
Personify Jealousy, Anger, Pride, Greed,
Envy, Sloth, Love , or some other
emotion
Your poem should be between 4-8 lines
Personification
Metaphor
Simile
Imagery
Aural imagery
• alliteration
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia
Symbol
Symbol
• Highly suggestive in a few
words
• Physical object that
represents or stands for
something else
• Most powerful symbols do not
specify the ideas they
represent
Tips on studying symbol
List the meaning of each
symbol
Explain how each symbol
contributes to the overall
meaning of the poem
A Work of Artifice
The bonsai tree
In the attractive pot
Could have grown eighty feet tall
On the side of a mountain
Till split by lightning.
But a gardener
Symbol
Carefully pruned it
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he whittles back the branches
The gardener croons,
It is your nature
To be small and cozy,
Domestic and weak;
How lucky, little tree,
To have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
One must begin very early
To dwarf their growth:
The bound feet,
The crippled brain,
The hair in curlers,
The hand you love to touch.
Marge Piercy
A Work of Artifice
1. What are the symbols in the following
poem?
2. What do they represent? How are these
symbols used to contribute to the meaning
of the poem?
Imagery may be defined as the
representation through language of
sense experience. It is the use of
words to create a mental picture.
Poetry appeals to our senses, of
course through its music and rhythms,
which we actually hear when it is read
aloud. But indirectly it appeals to our
sense experience, the representation to
the imagination of sense experience.
Imagery
Sensuous imagery—pleasurable for
its own sake, but also provides
concreteness and immediacy.
The word image perhaps most often
suggests a mental picture, something
seen in the mind’s eye—and visual
imagery is the kind of imagery that
occurs most frequently in poetry. But
an image may also represent a sound
(auditory imagery); a smell (olfactory
imagery); a taste (gustatory imagery);
touch, such as hardness, softness,
wetness, or heat and cold (tactile
imagery).
Imagery cont’d
Though the term image suggests a thing seen,
when speaking of images in poetry we
generally mean a word or sequence of words
that refers to any sensory experience.
Remember to ask why are the images
important?
Imagery usually helps to illuminate the
meaning of the poem.
Meeting at Night
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Highlight the images that appeal to your
senses. How do they contribute to the
meaning of the poem?
Your turn—Portfolio Poem #7
Write a poem that appeals to
the five sense. Your poem
should be 10-12 lines.
Hyperbole
An exaggerated expression, also
called overstatement, for a
particular effect, which may be
humorous, satirical, or intensely
emotional. Hyperbole is the
expression of folktales and
legends.
Example: I have mountains of
work to do.
Hyperbole
The poet uses hyperbole to
overstate something to reveal the
truth.
In a poem called “Sow” Sylvia
Plath describes how much the
sow eats. She writes, “Of kitchen
slops and, stomaching no
constraint,/ Proceeded to swill/
The seven seas and every earthquaking continent.”
Andrew Marvel
“ Two hundred years should go to
praise / Thine eyes, and on thy
forehead gaze:
Two hundred to adore each breast:
And thirty thousand to the rest. . .”
-To his Coy Mistress
One Art—Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or
next- to -last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Villanelle— poem that uses the
repetition of lines
1. How is hyperbole used in this poem? For
what reason?
Your turn #9
Write a poem that uses
hyperbole. Your poem should
be between 10-12 lines
A hint: The poem “One Art”
repeats the same line several
times (villanelle). Try writing a
poem that uses the same line
to begin and end the poem.
Onomatopoeia
We are familiar with onomatopoeia even if we don’t
understand the word. When two cars collide, what
sound do they make? Crash! That is onomatopoeia –
words that make the sound they are imitating.
Here are some more examples
Screech
Hiss
Cluck
Neigh
Buzz
Crash
Pow
Here is a poem by Eve Merriam appropriately titled
“Onomatopoeia.” Highlight all of the different sounds you
hear.
The rusty spigot
sputter,
utters
a sputter,
spatters a smattering of drops,
gashes wider;
slash,
splatters,
scatters,
spurts,
finally stops sputtering
and plash!
gushes rushes splashes
clear water dashes.
1. What words did you highlight?