Extended Metaphor Assignment
Learning Goals: Students will discover more about themselves as writers and share their discoveries with others in the classroom writing community.
Writing Habits Journal Questions: Please answer as thoroughly as possible
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What are your best memories about writing?
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What is the easiest thing about writing for you, and why?
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What is the most difficult thing about writing for you, and why?
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What different kinds of writing do you do? Who reads your writing? Where is your writing published or shared with others?
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What materials and/or equipment do you like to have on hand when you write? What are these items for? Why do you have them?
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What steps do you follow when you write? Outline your writing process, using a simple, informal outline format.
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Are you a procrastinator when it comes to writing? What do you try to avoid? What do you typically do instead?
 What’s the biggest influence on the way that you write? Why does it make a difference?
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If someone else were observing you as a writer, what would they notice? What would they see or hear?
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Overall, how would you describe yourself as a writer? What kind of writer are you, and why do you say so?
The Writer by Richard Wilbur
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
In her room at the prow of the house
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Extended Metaphor Assignment
“The Writer” Analysis Focus Questions o Who is the speaker? Who is telling the story in this poem?
 o Where is the speaker when the events in the poem take place? 
 o Which parts are from the present, and which are from memories? 
 o What are the speaker's emotions?
 o How do the speaker's feelings influence the message? o Identify the subject of the poem, using the following questions:
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What is the speaker talking about?
 What is the message in the poem? 
 o What is the speaker trying to communicate? o Listen for comparisons in the poem. If you have difficulty identifying the comparison, ask the following questions about specific images in the poem to guide your observations:
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What words and ideas in the poem have to do with ships and boats?
 How do the words that describe sounds in the poem work (e.g.,
"commotion," "stillness," "silent")? What comparisons do they suggest?
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How is the starling in the poem a comparison? o Discuss how accurate the comparisons are and what they tell readers about the speaker and the subject of the poem.
Using Metaphors in Creative Writing
What is a metaphor?
The term metaphor meant in Greek "carry something across" or
"transfer," which suggests many of the more elaborate definitions below:
Parts of a Metaphor
Tenor-Writer’s subject [concrete/literal]
Vehicle—to what the tenor is being compared [abstract/figurative]
Metaphor Table
Definition
A comparison between two things, based on resemblance or similarity, without using "like" or "as"
The act of giving a thing a name that belongs to something else
The transferring of things and words from their proper signification to an improper similitude for the sake of beauty, necessity, polish, or emphasis
A device for seeing something in terms of something else
Understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another
Origin most dictionaries and textbooks
Aristotle
Diomedes
Kenneth Burke
John Searle

Extended Metaphor Assignment
A simile contracted to its smallest dimensions
Related terms
Related Terms Table extended or telescoping metaphor : A sustained metaphor. implied metaphor : A less direct metaphor. mixed metaphor : The awkward, often silly use of more than one metaphor at a time. To be avoided! dead metaphor : A commonly used metaphor that has become over time part of ordinary language. simile : A comparison using "like" or "as" metonym : The substitution of one term for another with which it is commonly associated or closely related. synecdoche : The substitution of a part for the whole or vice versa (a kind of metonym).
The teacher descended upon the exams, sank his talons into their pages, ripped the answers to shreds, and then, perching in his chair, began to digest.
John swelled and ruffled his plumage.
(versus John was a peacock)
The movie struck a spark that massaged the audience's conscience. tying up loose ends, a submarine sandwich, a branch of government, and most clichés
Her face was pale as the moon. the pen is mightier than the sword, the crown (referring to a Queen or King), hands (referring to workers who use their hands) give us this day our daily bread
They enliven ordinary language.
People get so accustomed to using the same words and phrases over and over, and always in the same ways, that they no longer know what they mean. Creative writers have the power to make the ordinary strange and the strange ordinary, making life interesting again.
They are generous to readers and listeners; they encourage interpretation.
When readers or listeners encounter a phrase or word that cannot be interpreted literally, they have to think—or rather, they are given the pleasure of interpretation. If you write "I am frustrated" or "The air was cold" you give your readers nothing to do—they say "so what?" On the other hand, if you say, "My ambition was Hiroshima, after the bombing," your readers can think about and choose from many possible meanings.
Joseph Priestly

Extended Metaphor Assignment
They are more efficient and economical than ordinary language; they give maximum meaning with a minimum of words.
By writing "my dorm is a prison," you suggest to your readers that you feel as though you were placed in solitary, you are fed lousy food, you are deprived of all of life's great pleasures, your room is poorly lit and cramped—and a hundred other things, that, if you tried to say them all, would probably take several pages.
They create new meanings; they allow you to write about feelings, thoughts, things, experiences, etc., for which there are no easy words; they are necessary.
There are many gaps in language. When a child looks at the sky and sees a star but does not know the word "star," she is forced to say, "Mommy, look at the lamp in the sky!" Similarly, when computer software developers created boxes on the screen as a user interface, they needed a new language; the result was windows. In your poems, you will often be trying to write about subjects, feelings, etc., so complex that you have no choice but to use metaphors.
They are a sign of genius.
Or so says Aristotle in Poetics: "[T]he greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." It is "a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars."
Uses of Metaphors as verbs The news that ignited his face snuffed out her smile. as adjectives and adverbs as prepositional phrases
Her carnivorous pencil carved up Susan's devotion.
The doctor inspected the rash with a vulture's eye. as appositives or modifiers On the sidewalk was yesterday's paper, an ink-stained sponge.
Most books give rather boring examples of metaphors such as my father is a bear or the librarian was a beast. However, in your poetry (and fiction for that matter) you can do much more than say X is Y, like an algebraic formula. Definitely play with extended metaphors (see above) and experiment with some of the following, using metaphors...
Examples
Metaphor Table
Scratching at the window with claws of pine, the wind wants in.
What a thrill—my thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone except for a sort of hinge of skin....A celebration this is. Out of a gap a million soldiers run, redcoats every one.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
Little boys lie still, awake wondering, wondering delicate little boxes of dust.
Imogene Bolls, "Coyote Wind"
Sylvia Plath, "Cut"
Robert Frost, "Once by the Pacific"
James Wright, "The Undermining of the
Defense Economy"

Extended Metaphor Assignment
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Connecting the poem to the writing activity: Explain what the poem communicates about writers and writing in general, as well as in the particular situation that the poem describes.
Writing Metaphor Assignment
After reading and analyzing Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Writer,” consider your experiences as a writer—the frustrations and the satisfactions you felt as you shaped words into meaning.
For this assignment, choose a metaphor that will tell others about you as a writer. You will build an extended metaphor, just as Wilbur has in his poem. Your goal is to show others what you are like as a writer.
Tips
1.
The metaphor you choose can take the form of an animal (e.g., an elephant, a fox, an ostrich), a machine (e.g., a bulldozer, a tank, a computer), or something else. Any metaphor you choose will be correct if you support your assertion.
2.
Your definition of yourself as a writer is crucial to your metaphor: Are you thinking of yourself as a paper writer, a letter writer, a story teller, a poet, a songwriter or something else? If your definition is not implied in the metaphor, you need to define it early in your project.
3.
Remember to provide detailed support for your metaphor. Think about specific characteristics of yourself as a writer that compare to the item you have chosen for your metaphor.
Project Options
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Write a paper that presents your metaphor. Choose the format that works best for your explanation. You might choose comparison/contrast to work through the ways that you compare to the object you’ve chosen. You could choose to write a persuasive paper that explains why the metaphor you’ve chosen is best. Other formats will work as well. Don’t feel limited to these two.
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Create a scrapbook the presents your metaphor to a reader. You can include photos, magazine clippings, drawings, text, and decorations—whatever makes sense for your metaphor. You can create a paper-based scrapbook, or work online in

Extended Metaphor Assignment
PowerPoint, using a slide for each page of your scrapbook.
• Compose a free verse poem like “The Writer” which shows how the metaphor you have chosen describes you as a writer. If desired, you may include a short explanation that points out additional details.
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Other idea? Just get it cleared with me first
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