Q. What is a meta phor, anyway?
A. Metaphors are bready things.
Good metaphors are the sacramental bread for our eucharists of meaning. (Not to be confused with the sermons of those eucharists, which are like similes.) Unpopular metaphors are fruitcakes. Over-extended metaphors are burnt toast. The current metaphor will be a little pile of smoking ashes by the time I am through with it.
From what I have said so far, it should be clear that anyone who would write, and publish, poetry without metaphors would eat peanut butter with a spoon, in public.
The True Poet does not use just any metaphor. Plain white bread will not do. The True Poet is, him- or her- self, a baker. If s/he is going to use stale bread, it will at least be his/her OWN stale bread, not store bought.
Nevertheless, there are one or two excellent off-the-shelf metaphors suitable for use by the Lazy Poet.
The Mother of All Metaphors
Grains barely need us to grow.
They are glorified grasses.
They are facts of life.
Facts that would fill fields forever
if we didn't bother to mow.
But from the field to the table
hands must intervene.
As from the fields to the poet
thoughts must intervene.
"Take this, and eat"
is not an abstract proposition,
it is an offer of humanity,
of hands AND thoughts.
Of course, as that poem illustrates so well by its deficiencies, poetry doth not live by bread alone. It also desires the meat of meaning itself, the cheese of rhyme, and the lettuce, tomato and onion of rhythm.
I will finish this month with a poetic cheeseburger:
A Brief Defense of Free Bread and Circuses
Many people have thought
free bread and circuses brought
the Roman Empire down so low.
And the same also say
that in a similar way
our own will collapse, you know.
They say it's a shame,
and the poor are to blame,
for demanding those shows and dough.
But I know it's a lie,
empires naturally die,
with or without the side-show,
And in dying ooze pus,
namely waste and surplus.
For me? - I`d like my share to go.
