2. Figures of Speech Metaphors and Similes Personification: Making the World Human Practice Poetry: Seeing Likenesses Feature Menu

3. We all make comparisons in our everyday speech: Poetry is alive because poets make imaginative comparisons. Figures of Speech “The dancer was spinning like a top.” “My little sister is a real doll!”

4. Figures of Speech Poets have a special talent for getting us to look at things differently. Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed;... William Shakespeare from Sonnet 18

5. Imaginative comparisons between unlike things are called figures of speech. There are three main figures of speech: Figures of Speech metaphorssimiles personification [End of Section]

6. If you say, “My brother—that rat— got me in trouble again,” A metaphor is a kind of comparison that directly compares one thing to another. Metaphors and Similes You are saying your brother is a rat. you are making a metaphor.

7. Here are the first three lines from Alfred Noyes’s poem “The Highwayman”: Metaphors and Similes What metaphor for the wind do you see? The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,… What was the moon? What was the road?

8. A simile is the comparison of one thing to another unlike thing using specific words, such as If you say your brother is “like a rat” or “as sneaky as a rat,” you are making a simile. Metaphors and Similes like as resembles

9. Poets try to find unusual metaphors and similes. Metaphors and Similes [End of Section] Duty is a bee, serving the flower-clients along her route. My thoughts are perched on a high twig. “Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind” — William Wordsworth

10. “The swan flirted, shyly turning her head.” “The sky wept buckets all day.” Personification: Making the World Human What are the sky and the swan being compared to? Can a sky weep? Can a swan flirt?

11. Personification is a type of comparison that speaks of something that is not human as if it had human abilities and reactions. Personification: Making the World Human But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands,... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”

12. Here’s part of a play by William Shakespeare. Let’s Try It Practice 1. What comparisons are made here? 2. What figure of speech are they? All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

13. Let’s Try It All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. Practice 1. What comparisons are made here? The world is compared to a stage, and people are compared to actors.

14. Let’s Try It All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. Practice 2. What figure of speech are they? The comparisons are metaphors. They do not use like or as.

15. Let’s Try It And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Practice 3. What comparisons are made here? 4. What figure of speech are they? How do you know?

16. Let’s Try It And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Practice 3. What comparisons are made here? A schoolboy is compared to a snail. A lover is compared to a furnace.

17. Let’s Try It And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Practice 4. What figure of speech are they? How do you know? They are both similes because they use the word like.

18. Poetry: Seeing Likenesses The End