Lit Hit!

I have been revamping my literature curriculum for a new course I will be teaching at a local college. At first, I thought I might have trouble coming up with poems for that section in the curriculum, but I have ended up with more ideas than I can use. I didn't even think I was much of a poetry fan, but apparently I am (!). I left a pad of paper by my desk to write down curriculum ideas, and every couple of days, I would write down another idea, for instance, Robert Frost ("Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood") and Dylan Thomas ("Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night). These are poems that I have frequently heard quoted or otherwise used in all sorts of public and private venues. The common, everyday metaphors of the "fork in the road," and of going "off the beaten path" relate back to Frost, for instance. Emma Lazarus, whose poem is on the Statue of Liberty, originated the phrase "Give me your tired, your poor," part of her poem including this line was put to music (I sung it with my high school choir). Of course, popular and classical music is full of poetry, set to music, of course--I am hoping to have students bring in favorite songs and we can talk about how music adds to (or detracts from) the enjoyment of the poetry itself.

More Metaphorical (Meta)fun

One of the nice things about metaphors is that they can release one from whatever is a bother or an annoyance, or just mundane, and allow the mind to float away into abstraction. I think about people who are trapped, for whatever reason, in mind-numbing routines of different kinds; some people who are seriously obsessive-compulsive, for example, might have to wash their hands dozens if not hundreds of times a day. They may have to check certain things before they leave a room, make sure certain objects are placed certain ways before they can do anything else.....I wonder what therapeutic value poetry might provide in such instances (and even lesser cases). A poem is like an emotional burst of description-narration-perception, and the opportunity for leaving compulsions behind is large (I think). To just look out a window and begin comparing concrete things seen to those not seen but imagined....an irrational, nonsensical opportunity to play with perception could be a welcome distraction maybe, or even a release of all the pent-up anxiety an obsessive-compulsive person is constantly trying to assuage.

Metaphor what?

They are everywhere, these pesky metaphors...in simple references such as "I am feeling up today" or "I'll see you around," we are pretending, for example, that there is actual motion in some direction. When we make comparisons, our imaginations often take flight (there it is again!) and show the breadth of our ability to observe, create, and generally describe. Some mountains look like hot fudge sundaes, complete with whipped cream (snow), while others resemble a breast, perhaps, or a giant dinosaur foot. Without metaphors, we would be left with tall, brown, white, long, short, wide, very wide, and so on. Limited descriptions, at best. Think about some of your favorite ways of describing things, or maybe everyday language you like to use often. You'd be surprised how frequently those metaphors can occur!

"Sub-bole" or delicious understatement!

Ah yes, we have all done it. "How are you?" someone asks, when we are steaming mad, and we say something like "oh, a little perturbed." Huh? Or, we have just seen a movie we loved, and respond to an inquiry about it with "not bad" or something equally milque-toasty.

Why? Well, let's see: sometimes we want to hide information from the asker of the question, or otherwise not let them know the extent of our enjoyment or displeasure. Sometimes we may be feeling the need for privacy. Sometimes we may deliberately want to mislead, for a variety of different reasons.

Any other ideas?

The Joys Of Hyperbole

It is a great word; its Greek roots mean to take a great big old (hyper) throw. Toss a big blanket of exaggeration over something. For an old softball player, that sounds like a lot of fun! Using hyperbole is, in fact, a very effective way to emphasize that something is incredibly important, more important than precision. To say something is a million, or billion, times more important than something else conjures up an image so all-encompassing that it is hard to shake it from my memory. I could color the words bright red and put them in a dramatic font, too, but there is nothing like a bigger-than-life metaphor to draw attention. Print advertisers like to do all three. If I were writing a poem, I would probably use hyperbole at some point to enlarge the passions of whatever I was describing. Where passions are involved, hyperbole cannot be far behind!

More On Hyperbole

Remember as kids how we might argue by saying things like "that happened a million times" or "no way in the world".......The more extreme our expression, the more convincing we were trying to be, or hoped we were, in any case. With my writing students, I try to steer them away from extreme or overly broad statements, since such statements usually cannot be backed up. Just one exception to such a general statement takes the air out of it. To be clear is to be precise, to express in degrees. But, sometimes that extreme statement is just what is called for, especially if all you care about is overwhelming the other person into submission ("is, isn't, is, isn't-infinity!")