Examples of Novel Metaphor, With
Discussion
Brief
Review of Metaphor Structure and Terminology
Conceptual Metaphor and Novel Metaphor
An Example from Oscar Wilde
Metaphors
of Bodily Experience Used to Express Negative Emotion
Metaphoric Interpretation of a Poem (10/16/2004)
Illustrations of
Lakoff and Turner’s Novel Uses of Metaphor From Kafka
John Woollard’s Illustration
Brief Review of Metaphor Structure and Terminology
Metaphor is when you talk about one thing in terms of
another. Metaphor can be detected by
close reading in context, by identifying words or phrases that are in some way
incongruous if interpreted entirely literally, or by noting rhetorical turns
that are not fully supported by literal statements. Finding the lexical items – the words or phrases that are somehow
incongruous – may be the most concrete
method. A shorthand for labeling metaphors
is Target is Source, where the
Target is what you are talking about and the Source is the metaphoric
domain. Most often the Target is more
abstract or subjective than the Source; talking about the Target in terms of the
Source makes subjective experience seem more physical or concrete.
For example, in “We want to hire someone who will be a good team player,” the highlighted words suggest a
metaphor where the Target is the selection of employees and the Source is recruiting
players for a sport or game team: the shorthand would be Employees are Members of a Competitive Team. The person saying this is presumed to have a
subjective sense of how employees work best in the organization, but is
choosing to represent this in the more concrete terms of competitive team
membership. This deliberate or
accidental choice automatically sets the frame (competitive group activity with
hierarchy and rules), direction or expectation (all members subordinate
themselves and contribute their best towards winning), associations (ranking,
prizes, penalties, goals, positions, etc.) and tends to eliminate or block from
consciousness all the alternatives (e.g., cultivation as in a gardening
metaphor, nurturing as in a family metaphor, protection as in a police or
medical metaphor).
Just a note on the shorthand naming of metaphors. The word “are” in the above example does not
imply equivalence nor is it a statement of a logical proposition. It is just a shorthand way to refer to the
metaphor and the possible existence of a set of relationships between something
being talked about (Target) and something quite different (Source), that is
useful for understanding.
Conceptual Metaphor and
Novel Metaphor
The
examples so far have been of commonplace metaphors - that is, metaphors that we
find in everyday usage, that are almost universally understood by those fluent
in English, and which employ source domains (such as the human body, animals,
plants and money transactions) that are very familiar to virtually
everyone. What about novel
metaphors? Metaphor research over
decades, as well as more recent scholarly work on conceptual metaphor, has
profited enormously from examining the novel use of metaphor by creative
writers and poets. Their metaphors operate
by the same principles we have been discussing (as documented extensively by
Lakoff and Turner, 1989; see below for a detailed
discussion of these principles, with illustrations from Kafka). The novel use of metaphor can simply consist
of common metaphors arranged in ways that produce a striking effect.
Let
us look for creative or novel metaphors in a literary example. We find unusual use of the Understanding
is Seeing metaphor in these
lines from the contemporary Irish poet, Eavan Boland (2001, p. 40), visiting
the region in which her grandmother had lived:
For once, I said,
I will face this landscape
and look at it as she was looked upon…
Here
the target domain concerns how she is to understand her grandmother. One source domain is looking with the eyes,
seeing the landscape; so we have the metaphor Understanding is
Seeing/Looking. Also we have the target domain of accepting
the grandmother and the source domain of physically turning so as to face
something: Accepting is Facing. Yet another metaphor in the
same fragment also involves the target domain of understanding, but now in the
sense of attitude, and the source domain of looking from a certain point of
view, giving us the metaphor Attitude is Seeing from a Particular Viewing
Position. Another still is a metaphor based on the
folk wisdom (including modern science) that living beings are naturally formed
by the place they live, in this case Person is Place or Knowing a Person is Seeing
a Person’s Habitat.
We
can name these metaphors, map their correspondences and reveal their
generic-level structure in the same manner as with any conceptual
metaphor. None of the metaphors is very
unusual. What is novel and creative
here is the way they are superimposed to give a distinctive character to this
particular target domain. The poet
expresses in compact form that she must accept her grandmother, the particular
impacts of her locale, and what kind of person she was considered to be, all
metaphorically expressed as seeing or viewing from and within a certain
place.
In
everyday conversation, including what occurs during conflict resolution,
therapy, or a learning situation, metaphoric meanings may not be so artfully
combined. Yet, one need not be a poet
to take inspiration from how this combination of metaphors expresses a complex
personal experience of knowing using the projections of several simple and
common aspects of visually seeing. Such
inspiration can help at the point when a therapist, mediator, or teacher wishes
to facilitate expanded and extended meaning in dialogue.
An Example from Oscar Wilde
Let
us look for creative or novel metaphor in another literary example. Consider this line from Oscar Wilde: “How else but through a broken heart
may the Spirit enter us?” Here
the target domain concerns how one obtains spirituality. A source domain is the person as a sealed
container, entry into which might occur through a break. Another metaphor in the same sentence
involves the target domain of desire or longing for spirituality and the source
domain of emotional suffering by having your heart broken. Another still is the personification of
Spirit as a being that enters through openings.
We
can name such creative metaphors, map their correspondences and reveal their
generic-level structure in the same manner as with conventional metaphors. While the Spiritual Longing
is Emotional Suffering metaphor
is somewhat novel (for non-poets) the Person is Container metaphor is quite conventional (“I’ve had
it up to here,” “A feeling of emptiness,” “Despite her love for
him he never let her in”). A
distinguishing characteristic of novel metaphors is the unity obtained when
several simple metaphors combine to form a unique understanding of the
particular target domain.
In everyday
conversation, including what occurs during conflict resolution, metaphoric
meaning may not be as sophisticated and instead is more likely to include
multiple metaphors expressed serially.
Metaphors of Landscape Used to Express The Experiences
of Thinking and Emotion
Reviewer Stephen
Burt describes (in the New York Times Book Review, 15 Aug 2004) how a number of
American poets use pastoral landscapes, imagined rural worlds, as metaphors for
inner "worlds." (Note that he
and many others may avoid the word "metaphor" and instead simply
refer to "symbols" that are said, in this case, to "encode
claims about politics, religion, dead friends, living rivals or difficult
loves.")
Some examples given
that I have put in the metaphor shorthand:
·
Unresolved Emotion is Landscape of Mythical Monsters
·
Psychological Withdrawal is Melody Played on Slim Bone Flute
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Frustration is Repeating Verse
·
Frustration is Drought, Winding Dry River Bed
·
Frustration is Stunted Growth
·
Remembering Former Loves is Taking Refuge in Walk From New York to Mexico
·
Truly Original Poetry is Field Where We Can Roam, Graze
Note the lexicon
used to express emotional trauma (Emotional Trauma is
Physical Trauma): being stabbed,
jolted, attacked, slapped, shunned, dumped on, struck, ditched, isolated,
crushed.
Metaphoric Interpretation of a Poem (10/16/2004)
The following poem is reproduced from a website. I have highlighted
words that would seem to indicate a metaphor.
In the column to the right are names of the metaphors I have found. Below that are notes that describe how I
think the metaphors work together.
Note on author:
In 1985, at the age of eighteen, Chris Abani was imprisoned
after… the Nigerian government labeled his first novel a threat to national
security. Upon release, Abani became active in a guerrilla theatre group that
dared to perform plays in front of government building. This activity landed
him in Kiri Kiri, a maximum-security prison. On his release, a year later, he
returned to the university where he continued to write and study literature
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The Poem
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Metaphors Found
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Jacob’s Ladder by Chris Abani
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Life is a Ladder
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Release, alive, from Kiri
Kiri
is rare.
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Life and Death are Places
Prison is Hell/Death
Release From Prison is Resurrection
Prisoner is Treasure in a Container
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They hand you what is left of
your personal belongings
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Person is What Person Possesses
Prisoner is Possessions No One Else
Wants
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in a polythene
bag. Everything
they did not want.
You step out and
stand in the
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sun thawing like a side of beef
from
a freezer. Yet you are afraid
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Prisoner is Meat
Prison is Freezer
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to proceed more than a few
steps from the
gate. Convinced you
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Mental State is Physical State
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will be shot in the back.
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Prisoner is Target; Prisoner is Prey
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Or that people
will recoil from you
knowing you carry the stench
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Prisoner is Smelly Person
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of death on your
now paler skin.
But
nothing happens.
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Prisoner is Colorless
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A gentle breeze ruffles your shirt and
a dog menaces a parked car.
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Normal Life is What is Carried by
Air, Breeze
(Normal, everyday events; gentle or not)
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The smell
of frying plantain,
carried gently hurts
inexplicably.
Cold,
sweet Coca-Cola stings you
to tears.
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To Warm Up, Open Up is To
Sense, Feel Pain
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Comments
About the Metaphors Found
Assume
that the title, Jacob’s Ladder, is the over-arching theme (Life is a Ladder). We know
something about Jacob’s Ladder from myth and metaphor that does not need to be
stated – that it is a ladder each rung of which is a station or location,
stretching between hell and heaven (Life
and Death are Places). It’s a rendition of the Great Chain of Being
metaphor (that figures into a lot of poetry) and it contains both a journey
aspect and an organizing principal. The
normative expectation (evoked by the metaphor) is to ascend to ever more
perfect or higher states of being (that’s what we are hoping for as outcome). So we are immediately told of these
possibilities even though there is little reference in the poem to how the
steps are organized. Up to this point
it seems we are to understand this poem, this person’s prison life and his
release from prison, in terms of a journey metaphor.
Interestingly,
even after invoking Jacob’s ladder and the Great Chain of Being, etc, the
journey metaphor is only minimally used.
The journey consists of only two steps – being in prison followed by the
first moment of being released.
Although the poem makes no reference to it, our common sense of the
journey metaphor says that most journeys have many steps, that there is a path,
there may be a guide or a map, that each step along the way gives different
vantage points, etc. The deployment of
the journey metaphor so over-simplified here simultaneously presents two
possibilities: One is that the prison
makes your life so stark and basic that there are only two states – being in
and getting out. The second is that
there might be so much more that the poet, for some reason, is not telling us
and that we might want to ask about.
The
idea of a container is both literal and figurative. It is literal in that a prison is a box with walls, difficult to
pass through. It is figurative in that
the psychological effect of being in prison is metaphorically understood as
being in a place you can’t get out of (Prison
is Hell/Death). Not only are the literal walls there, but
the psychological effects – what you are convinced of – become walls (Mental State is Physical State); this metaphor is implied from
the beginning of the poem narrative, but lexically evident at the middle when
the released prisoner is convinced he will be shot in the back). The location of this container, we may
assume, is at the bottom or near the bottom rung of Jacob’s ladder.
Death
is metaphorically understood as such a place; also understood to be removed
from normal life, enclosed, cold, smelly, colorless. The normative expectation for someone in such a place is to get
out if possible. One might ask, so what
is so informative about this? But the
point is that in using these metaphors to evoke the horror of the place so
vividly, alternative interpretations tend to be blocked – e.g., the possible
metaphor Being in Prison is a Journey
is suppressed and we find ourselves not thinking about a possible
figurative journey of traveling within the enclosed prison space.
A
person is, in general, metaphorically understood as a valuable thing –
something rare in the sense that a gem might be rare, even priceless (Prisoner is Treasure in a Container). Such a thing lost
in prison (death) is also rarely released (Release
From Prison is Resurrection). This might invoke other poetry about a
diamond in the rough, gold at the bottom of the sea, a treasure in a ruin,
etc. The normative expectation is to
cherish them, make good use of such things, not to waste, destroy or lose them.
When we
understand a person metaphorically to be thing this entails our
customary way of thinking about things.
What makes a thing valuable are its attributes. The person’s possessions are his attributes
(Person is What Person Possesses) and for the prisoner they have
been taken away, except for what no one wants.
The metaphorical way of presenting the prisoner as a thing tends to
suggest that he has lost all (Prisoner is Possessions No
One Else Wants). Then we see that the Prisoner is Target; Prisoner is Prey.
That is what the poem states. But
an ironic interpretation will come to mind – that he is not a thing, target or
prey but instead a person climbing Jacob’s ladder, embodying human capabilities
of qualitatively greater worth even than a rare, concealed treasure. It is not clear if this ironic
interpretation is intended.
The
poem goes on to add to the description of prison and the prisoner’s experience
with the metaphors of Prison is Freezer,
Prisoner is Meat, Prisoner is Colorless, and Prisoner is
Smelly Person. These don’t add much to Prison is Hell/Death, so why include them? Adding metaphors in this way usually rounds out a description or
sets up interaction with other metaphors already there. These later ones seem to redirect attention
to the state of the prisoner’s body – congealed, smelly, armored, colorless,
prepared to endure violence, but unable to absorb normal stimuli – and this
sets us up to understand how, at the end of the poem, the warming of the sun
and feeling everyday breezes (Normal Life is What is
Carried by Air, Breeze),
etc. can be painful and stinging (To Warm
Up, Open Up is To Feel Pain).
Usefulness
of the Metaphors
Searching
for and finding metaphors in a poem is not the same as decoding a cipher
– finding the rules that, when applied, explain exactly what was meant. Instead it is a way to have a dialogue. Identifying a metaphor is identifying a set
of possible relationships that may exist between the poem’s text and various
metaphoric domains that are evoked.
With knowledge of these metaphors the commentator can ask the poet, “You
invoked such and such a metaphor and this metaphor sets up a particular
inference structure. Which of these
inferences did you intend, and which not, and why?”
As does
any poem, this one has non-metaphoric aspects such as a storyline with
chronology and literal statements of what happened. The metaphoric interpretation of this poem may do no more than
perhaps deepen a little bit the interpretations one would make without special
attention to the metaphors.
But it
can be fascinating to see how metaphors interact with literal aspects. Although there are more than a dozen
different metaphors, they do not clash with the literal parts but enhance
them. It would be interesting to
explore how much of what the author experienced could actually be expressed
literally. Note that, among themselves,
the metaphors in this poem are not “mixed metaphors” but coherent in their
overall effect. This is certainly not
true in casual conversation or even in carefully constructed prose, and may not
be in some poetry. The interplay of
several metaphors, and metaphors with literal statements, could reveal
ambivalence, confusion or even deception.
Metaphors are deployed for rhetorical purposes, but cognitive science
also points to the close correspondence between metaphor use and unconscious
thinking. So metaphor interpretation
could be said to offer a window into what an author “really” thinks.
The
title of the poem evokes a much more inclusive master metaphor than found
within the poem, itself, and we may want to ask why. The insights gained about the overall organization of the poem,
what is said and what is left unsaid, add enjoyment and ought to provoke
comment. Perhaps most importantly
metaphor awareness suggests several areas that have not been talked about in
the poem explicitly but, by belonging to the structure of the metaphors, may or
may not be intentionally implied.
Lakoff and Turner’s Novel Uses of Metaphor
Using Illustrations From Kafka
Lakoff and Turner
illustrate with various quotations from Shakespeare, Yeats and others, but I
will attempt to demonstrate all of these within a short story from Kafka
(1917/1997), “A Report for an Academy”.
The story is in the form of a lecture given by an ape – one that has
lived among men for some years – to a scientific academy. The allegory tells how the ape is wounded,
then captured in the wild, caged, transported, tamed, trained and civilized,
becoming an exemplary model of human decorum.
The reader can make sense of the ape-man’s account to the Academy of his
experiences by metaphorically understanding the socialization process of humans
using the very common metaphor of Man is
an Animal, more particularly, Socialization of Man is Taming of an Animal. Even though
this metaphor is commonplace, Kafka’s creative use of it diverges from the
ordinary and unlocks novel possibilities.
Here are the six ways:
Extending a
Metaphor. Only some of the correspondence mappings of a metaphor
are normally used, but it can be extended by using additional ones that we
might not normally consider. For
example, the dominant role of instinct in animals is routinely projected onto
man: brutishness, assertion of primary needs, survival in the wild, and so on. All of these are in this story but Kafka
extends the metaphor beyond its conventional use by emphasizing another mapping
we probably would not have thought of – that of wounding. Although it may be common to capture wild
animals by first wounding them, normally we may not think how early wounds to
humans may shape their eventual socialization.
Similarly Kafka takes another uncommon mapping – the animal capacity for
tranquility or quiescence – what he calls inner peace. At the beginning of the ape-man’s captivity
his keepers sometimes treated him gently and playfully and this helped him feel
peaceful. ”The peace I gained while
among these people kept me from making any attempt to escape” (85) even though
he most wanted a way out of captivity.
Elaborating a Metaphor. Among the
mappings of a metaphor that are used, normally some will not be described fully
while others are. Kafka describes the
ape’s instinctive struggle to get food and to free himself. He also describes the ape’s heightened
attention to everything his captors did and how he began to imitate the
captors’ actions (evoking the conventional idea of “monkey see, monkey
do”). Kafka elaborates on this mapping,
describing how the ape took a schnapps bottle and drank exactly as the men did. This elaboration is unexpected since so much
of animal behavior is instinctive need-fulfillment. The imitative drinking actually sickened him, but he “aped” as he
“took the schnapps bottle that had accidentally been left by my cage, uncorked
it… put it to my mouth and… like an expert drinker, with rolling eyes, a
gurgling throat, really and truly drank the whole bottle…” (p 90). The men cheer. The imitative ape behavior is elaborated into the special case of
a learning experience and bonding ritual that opens up possibilities for the
ape.
Questioning a Metaphor. Metaphors are
never perfectly apt. Fully mapped,
there will always be some aspects of the source domain that don’t accurately
correspond to the target. But this will
not be a shortcoming if such discrepancies are used to highlight important
characteristics of the target domain, to break thought patterns, or suggest
contrary mappings. In this story Kafka
maintains the Man is an Animal
metaphor as an allegorical story line throughout. However he puts the aptness of this metaphor in question when
the ape transcends imitation, acting, and his training as a stage
performer. “Through an effort that has
never since been repeated in the world I attained the education of an average
European.” This, the ape says, “…helped
me out of my cage and created a special way out for me, the human way out.” (p
92). The ape has benefited from
super-human achievements. Now is it man
or ape who is more highly evolved?
Composing Metaphors. Other
metaphors are also used within the story.
Certain ones combine with the Man
is an Animal metaphor to give the story its unique structure. Journey; variety theater; The ape moves from being a captive, to being
trained, to being a performer, and finally becomes a star performer with all
the worldly benefits that accrue. From
the start when he is shot and captured he is on a journey. His destination is not freedom, but simply
“a way out.” He passes through several
arduous stages along the way, but is motivated to do what is necessary to keep
going. The ape-man’s journey metaphor
is elaborated with his “special way out” in place of a more conventional
destination. Composing the metaphors Man is an Animal with Life is a Journey combines the
planfulness of taking a journey with the single-mindedness of animal instinct –
a distinctive structure giving rise to divergent interpretation. Later, when the ape-man becomes a star of
the variety theater, Life is Performing
on the Stage composes the imitative character of an ape with the
purposefulness of a journey, depicting almost superhuman accomplishment in a
subhuman creature.
Personification
Metaphors. This is a highly composed form of metaphor combination – taking
attributes, events and relationships observed in the target domain and
representing them metaphorically as those of humans. By so doing, even something as impassive as a rock can take on
human emotions, motivation, or perception, allowing us to think about it as we
might regard ourselves. This permits
the creation and exploration of rich and unexpected ideas and is a major
divergent influence of metaphors.
However, Kafka evidently had plenty of creative scope already at hand
and, in the story considered here, I have found no personification in which
lesser beings, objects or ideas are metaphorically understood as people or, for
that matter, as animals. (The thematic
allegory of the story, in fact, uses an animal metaphor in reverse,
understanding people as apes.) Weak
forms of personification (that might be called animation metaphors) are
ubiquitous and include the attribution of change, power and influence to
inanimate, powerless and often unmoving objects or abstractions. Kafka animates things and concepts such as
when “promises appear belatedly” and an “accumulation of observations
that forced me in the direction…” (p 86) or when the ape-man considers
escape from his own cage only to be put in that of his fellow captives from the
jungle, where he might feel the embrace of boa constrictors. Such animation metaphors lack the complete
composition of personhood that Lakoff and Turner illustrate, such as “The world
is awake tonight./ It is lying on its back with its eyes open” (1989: 72).
Generic Structure of
Metaphors. Many conceptual metaphors have within them basic metaphor
structures that tie them together with other metaphors to allow more complex
compositions and the potential for marked divergence in meaning. Two such generic metaphors that have been
extensively studied are the Great Chain of Being (giving metaphoric
understanding of entities, objects, things, and beings) and Event Structure
(through which we metaphorically understand change, events, and causation)
(Kövecses 200 ; Lakoff and Turner 1989; Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
Great Chain of Being
Metaphor. The hierarchic organization of existence that we understand from
folk wisdom and religious doctrine and that is recapitulated in countless ideas
and assumptions we use daily is called the Great Chain of Being. It is a set of philosophical principals
giving rise to the kind of parallelism we observe, for example, between mammal
and reptile physiology, between a river and a blood vessel, between the mind
and the soul, or between a computer and a brain. Traditional versions of the Great Chain of Being range linearly
along a continuum of forms from the simplest things, on up to deities, and each
form shares at least one attribute with its nearest neighbors. The order is hierarchic such that forms are
more complex, capable and perfect as you move towards the top. Wilber (2001 [Wilber, K. (2001) Quantum
Questions, Boston: Shambhala, p.14])
represents the Great Chain metaphor in concentric circles, with physical matter
at the center, ranging through life, mind, soul to spirit in the outer-most
circle. While a fully rich
understanding may only be achieved by dedicated scholars or saints, virtually
everyone acquires folk knowledge of the essential tenets of the Great Chain of
Being from an early age. Lakoff and
Turner (1989:166) assert that the Chain of Being metaphor "is largely
unconscious and so fundamental to our understanding that we barely notice
it."
Note the parallelism or
resonance seen to exist between all such levels (e.g., moral functions are
analogous to cognitive functions but include the higher power to organize
community, global, or cosmic concerns).
The Chain of Being metaphor evokes the naturally occurring essences of
things and beings that give rise to naturally occurring outcomes. Unlike the Event Structure metaphor
considered below, the Great Chain of Being does not involve motion nor is it
conceived in terms of a mechanism. For
example, the essential aspects of an animal give rise to that animal's
instincts and instinctual behaviors, or the power and authority of a magician
give rise to miracles; in such examples the entity (thing, animal, human) is
being more truly itself.
With regard to
personification, animal and animation metaphors, mentioned earlier, the
"lower order" forms in the Chain are useful because we have detailed familiarity
with, for example, how animals naturally mate, seek food, etc. or how pieces
slide into place, objects have insides and outsides or structures are
built. So, comprehending complexities
of humans in terms of simpler characteristics of things or of other beings in
nature serves to understand higher in terms of lower, complex in terms of
simpler, reason in terms of biology or physics, etc. However, when it comes to understanding higher processes in
animals we may readily use subjective experience in oneself in an
anthropocentric personification metaphor (e.g., the cat chooses to be
independent), or to understand people we may invoke angels or the cosmos as
metaphoric source domains.
Lakoff and Turner (1989)
tie understanding of the Chain of Being to the Generic
is Specific metaphor. In Kafka’s
tale mankind’s generic socialization and development are metaphorically
understood in terms of a specific ape-man’s allegory. Kövecses (2002) describes an “extended” Chain of Being that has
gradations integrated within each level such that knowledge about the order of
things and the part-whole structure reveals levels and parallel patterns that
we might regard as analogous. For
example, physical matter can be simply substance, or can be differentiated into
parts that form a whole, and eventually (at a higher level) into life
forms. Life can be differentiated into
metabolism, reproduction, mobility and self-propulsion, introspection,
cognitive function, moral function, etc.
The ape-man’s passage
through several phases of his transformation – captivity, taming, imitating,
and stage acting – replicates a generic set of part-whole relationships that
allow us to make sense of the story. It
works because we are so familiar, not just with animal and human development,
but with how humans and animals are the same in certain respects. We don’t normally think of human development
as finding a way out of a cage, nor do we generally understand how one learns
to act creatively on stage in terms of a primate’s simple imitation to please
his captors. Yet this metaphoric
allegory regarding higher human function works in terms of lower primate
capacities and needs no special explanation.
Kafka uses the Chain of
Being metaphor structure also to project understanding of a kind of super-human
capacity for discipline that the ape-man has more so than a human, which
achieves a liberation for the ape-man cast in terms of human satisfaction… we
understand human capacities in terms of animal ones, and animal capacities in
terms of human ones…
John Wollard’s Illustration of Metaphor in Poetry
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John Woollard
May 2001
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Metaphor is used in invoke thought and contemplation of an idea. In this
short poem there is an implied connection between the concept mountain and
the concept motherhood.
The poetry is considered to have alliterative depth because the words play
upon the metaphor and twist the mind's consideration of the concept of
motherhood through reference to the mountain state. The mountain is: old
(grey haired) and getting older; protecting (creates an enclosed valley
climate); creator (the rich alluvial soil is created from the erosion of the
mountain side); maid (the mountain serves the valley with water from the
spring thaws and relief rain); wrinkled (ever deepening lines in the surface
of the mountainside); her children (the foot hills created by the erosion of
the mountain)…
A metaphor gives dimension to the one dimensional structure of speech,
poetry and prose. Because speech, poetry and descriptive prose is a fleeting
temporal linear means of communication and because the human is limited by
the amount of information that can be stored and processed in the active mind
at any one time, speakers and writers always benefit from using tools that
bring information into active memory for re-coding it for communication or
encoding it for long term memory.
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Reproduced here from http://www.soton.ac.uk/~metaphor/poem/
without permission.