ajor figures of speech are alliteration, simile and metaphor.
Alliteration is the repetition of an initial sound in two or more words of a phrase or a line of poetry. It functions to appeal to the reader’s or listener’s ear, and to bind the phrase. For example, William Blake (1757-1827)’s
Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Simile is a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, dissimilar thing. Two essentially unlike things are compared, usually in a phrase introduced by like or as. For example, from Rita Dove’s WingfootLake(Independence Day, 1964):
“...the girls like young horses eyeing the track.” Metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used as one thing is applied to another, dissimilar thing, thus making an implicit comparison. It involves nonliteral use of words. For example, from Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes:” the stiff heart / a quartz contentment / the hour of lead.
It is possible to overdo use of metaphors. “Come, Captain Age, With your great sea-chest full of treasure! Under the yellow and wrinkled tarpaulin Disclose the carved ivory And the sandalwood inlaid with pearl. Riches of wisdom and years?” (Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn [1876-1959] Contented at Forty, 1916.)
"Poetry helped me to be a little less stupid as I stumbled through the process," writes Rachel Hadas in Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia and Poetry
(Paul Dry Books, 2010). The strange relation is Hadas’ spouse, victim at 61 of early onset dementia. As she negotiated the years before George moved to an assisted living facility, reading and writing became her life line. Just to help her manage, she says. "Poetry has always been a way of coping for me ... since my father died when I was 17, I've turned to poetry not only to express my feelings ... but consistently to figure out what I was feeling at a given time." Chapter 3: “ Into the Murky World” is online at National Public Radio’s http://www.npr.org.
Anne Sexton (1928-1974) explored the meaning of “Courage” in later years, evoking a series of concrete experiences and visual images. The final verse:
When you face old age and its natural conclusion
Your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
Each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
Those you love will live in a fever of love.
And you’ll bargain with the calendar
And at the last moment
When death opens the back door
You’ll put on your carpet slippers
And stride out.
Eighty-five year old, retired language teacher and Berkeley resident Lenore Waters is a powerful senior who coordinates the French conversation class at the North Berkeley Senior Center (2-4 P.M. Mondays,) volunteers at the Berkeley Rep, and authors books with daughter Jennifer, aka Jennifer Blowdryer, e.g. The Revolution of 1964; Mother-Daughter Poems.
WISDOM by Lenore Waters, January 2011
Having lived eighty five years
Am I ready to sit atop
A high rocky mountain
Waiting for pilgrims to
Make the hard painful climb
To ask for answers,
Answers to questions
Much much older than I?
The Pilgrim might ask:
How do I find HAPPINESS?
Will I ever find another job?
Why do my children hate me?
Where did I go wrong?
Is Ms or Mister Right
Around the corner?
Where do I get on the road of Happiness?
And I, from my precarious perch
With eighty five years
Worth of supposed wisdom
You’re asking me?
You’re asking ME?
Retired social worker, union and YMCA member Irving Kestin shares with us The Staircase:
The house staircase led quietly to the upper storage area.
Everything stored over the past 60 plus years by succeeding
related generations of occupants
A littered, cluttered area. Walking there meant climbing in between,
around mounds of furniture, left overs, kitchen equipment.
At night, whispers wafted downward from the staircase.
Whispers from those past generations.
The cat’s soft meow, the dog Tim’s muffled cry of joy.
Grandmother Thelma’s English accented voice, reciting a poe