So Much Lettuce
I want to know what all you cats out there think about metaphor. Is it the highest achievement of figurative language? Is it old hat? Have we not incorporated more interesting things into our American English? Please help. Some of us in Chicago are drowning in metaphor...
I couldn't agree more with Woody about goddamned poetry workshops. They can good conversations & they're not completely useless, especially when they're full of good people & quality work (i was in a workshop with Stephanie Strickland last spring & it was amazing, mostly because she's amazing!). But a workshop led by someone who only wants to talk metaphor & logical connection & reads everything literally is a serious fucking bore. I'm in such a workshop now & it's murder. I can't believe i have to miss the Bulls for such bullshit.
So please, someone, tell me there's more to word life than metaphor. Or break my heart.
posted by the foundling @ 11:42 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I disagree. Metaphor can get tired, but then so can various literary/ rhetorical/ language/ figurative devices. Just like you can get tired of drinking port or wearing sandals or saying the word 'great'. But once it was good and useful, and therefore, in some gossamer back-of-the-mind way, it always has 'good and useful' dust on its wings.
Metaphor, I think, is an incredibly useful and accessible tool, capable of expalining this world--or attempting to--in ways otherwise seemingly impossible. While it is by no means the monolith of language, to write it off on a grand scale seems to me to be missing something big.
Where would literature be without it? Even your Sox victory poem posted on the fifth circle has at least one metaphor. Maybe we can't escape it. Maybe it's in our bones.
Sorry workshop's not doing it for you. Maybe more aleatory workshops (coffee shops, bars) would be a better fit?
Cheers, & best.
I tend to agree with Sean about the self-selected part. Having those few key people who you can trust not to be sycophant but are kind and sensitive enough to know when your ego needs a little stroking is crucial :)
Also, random, I am an idiot. It WAS about Spicer, wasn't it?
Later gater,
b
Ryan,
hey there---just stumbled on this through Brandi's blog.
I am SO with you on the workshop thing...I don't have any problem in general with metaphor, but I think C's idea of what constitutes it, and what poetry can be, is so very ridiculously narrow. And she gets seriously defensive if any of us dare disagree with her. I agree with you about Stephanie's workshop...probably the only one I've had in the program that I really felt did me some good.
Kristy
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