“People disappear when they die.
Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh.
Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful
and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in
the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their
humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can
anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They
can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like
corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should
pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of
magic.” ~ Diane Setterfield
I began this prompt with a quote
from The Thirteenth Tale because on
the 13th day of our 30/30 in April, I wish to celebrate the number
13 and metaphor (as a poetic device).
The guidelines:
-
choose 3 to 13 (nonconsecutive) words out of Setterfield’s quote
-
use them in a poem that is a deliberate celebration of metaphor
I’m adding two simple
definitions of metaphor (stolen from the dictionary *cough*), just so that we
can hear the same tune (which, of course, we should dance in our own styles):
1)
Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an
object or action to which it is not literally applicable
2)
Metaphor is a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else,
especially something abstract
I also want to share one of my
favorite metaphors from Sylvia Plath, “I’ve eaten a bag of green apples”, which
appears in her poem (aptly titled), “Metaphor”. Today, I wish to read poems
full of metaphors used to tell tales as mind-tickling as Sylvia’s bag of ambiguously green fruit.
Let’s fill the Imaginary Garden with
poetry that shows how metaphor can help us birth art that keeps us from
disappearing when we die. Please add the
direct link to your poem to Mr. Linky. Then go for a swim in other Toads’
poetic ink.