[New-Poetry] Metaphorica

[Bob Grumman]

I agree with what you're saying, David, except I think you're talking 
about symbols, not metaphors. 

--Bob G.

David Graham wrote:
> Frost's "Education By Metaphor" is also interesting along these lines.  
>
> When I teach metaphor one thing I often find myself talking about is 
> the difference between what might be called cultural or natural 
> metaphors, which often lie buried below the surface, and ones that are 
> more a matter of surface glitter & individual invention.  Natural 
> metaphors would include things like winter as the season of old age, 
> flowers as symbols of transient beauty, etc.  A cultural metaphor 
> might be the "road of life" notion that underlies a poem like Frost's 
> "The Road Not Taken."  Frost is conventionally associating time with 
> space, and envisioning experiencing time as walking down a path. 
>  Students often don't realize it's a metaphor, in my experience, until 
> you point it out.  (For example, I ask them how they *know* the poem's 
> about big life decisions, which they all "get" right away, and not 
> just a walk in the woods on Saturday.)  As I recall from an 
> Anthropology class long ago, the future is "ahead" only in some cultures.
>
> Cultural & natural metaphors, as I see it, don't go "dead," typically, 
> unless they're presented too baldly or simplistically.  If you simply 
> write that "time is money," that's obviously stale; but if you work up 
> some economic metaphors to describe time passing, that can be fine if 
> you find fresh ways to put it.  
>
> The other sort of metaphor, which generally calls more attention to 
> itself, goes dead rather quickly when overused; it becomes a pre-fab 
> phrase or idea, like "bat out of hell," which when first coined was 
> probably a stunner.  As was "the bottom line" when I first heard it. . . .
>
>
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu <mailto:grahamd at ripon.edu>
>
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>
>
> On Feb 14, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Michael Snider wrote:
>
>>
>> On Feb 14, 2008, at 10:12 AM, Halvard Johnson wrote:
>>
>>> Of course, Hall also said that, when reading poetry, he'd read only
>>> as far as the first "dead metaphor"--which, as we know, is a dead
>>> metaphor in itself.
>>>>
>>
>> But did he say that in a poem?
>>
>> And more seriously, what about things like "follow a train of 
>> thought"? There are at least two metaphors buried there-- George 
>> Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in Metaphors We Live By, argue pretty 
>> persuasively that human thought is impossible without metaphor, and 
>> later, in Philosophy in the Fesh, that most of those metaphors are 
>> dependent on (hang from) out literal (as if read) flesh.
>>
>> Is a fresh-killed metaphor OK until it begins to stink, and then once 
>> more poetically useful when the odor of decay has gone?
>>
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