Metaphor-to-Meaning Structure

The metaphor-to-meaning structure is a two-part structure that moves from supplying a metaphor for something (a thing, or a situation) to revealing the meaning of, the significance behind, that metaphor.

The use of such late revelation is strategic.  Like jokes and riddles, which of course do not give up their punch lines or solutions right away, some poems strategically employ the energy and the interest that can be garnered by creating and keeping alive suspense, by revealing what it in fact is “about” only at poem’s end.

The delayed revelation can also signify psychological pressure to try to repress the truth which is only revealed toward poem’s end, as occurs in “Fragments.”

“A noiseless, patient spider…,” by Walt Whitman

(Rae Armantrout’s “Dusk” is a funny, parody of Whitman’s poem, one that employs the ironic structure.  Check it out here.)

“Anchored to the Infinite,” by Edwin Markham

Markham’s poem is very similar to Whitman’s.

“Simile,” by Peter Campion (in The Lions (Chicago: U of Chicago, 2009)).

“Duck / Rabbit,” by Billy Collins

(Take a look at a duck/rabbit here.)

“Violin,” by Joanne Diaz

“We grow accustomed to the Dark–,” by Emily Dickinson

“Fragments,” by Stephen Dobyns

You can find an excellent discussion of Dobyns’s poem in “The Flexible Lyric” in Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Flexible Lyric (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1999), pp. 162-67).

“Difference,” by Mark Doty

“A Snowfall,” by Richard Eberhart (in Fifty Contemporary Poets: The Creative Process, edited by Alberta T. Turner (New York: David McKay Company, 1977), pp. 85-6).

“Eight Ball,” by Claudia Emerson

“Metaphor,” by Claudia Emerson

“A Bird in the House,” by Claudia Emerson

All three of the above poems are from the first section of Claudia Emerson’s Late Wife, “Divorce Epistles.”  The first two poems create metaphors for the dissolving marriage.  ”A Bird in the House” creates a metaphor for the way the speaker imagines her absence might be felt in her ex-husband’s life…

“The Silken Tent,” by Robert Frost

A big part of the constructed loveliness of “The Silken Tent” is that there’s almost no overt turning in it–but there is some subtle turning.  The “meaning” of ”The Silken Tent”‘s gorgeously constructed and maintained metaphor is offered in line 7: the tent “signifies the sureness of the soul.”  And, of course, at the end of the sonnet, in the final couplet, where one expects the big movement of the turn, there is at least the hint of some movement.  “The Silken Tent” contains structure, but it also is a model of the use of understatement.

“Mismatched Newlyweds,” by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Landinsky

“Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breast,” by Robert Herrick

“The Envoy,” by Jane Hirshfield

There seem to be two kinds of meanings provided in “The Envoy”: both the revelation of the meaning of the metaphor and a larger statement of the meaning of the poem: metaphor, meaning, and all.  (That is, this poem may employ a hybrid structure that combines the metaphor-to-meaning structure with a similar structure: the story-with-a-moral structure.)

“Sonoma Fire,” by Jane Hirshfield

“Cement Truck,” by Tony Hoagland

“Love,” by Tony Hoagland (in Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2010): 18).

“Part of Eve’s Discussion,” by Marie Howe

Howe’s is a mysterious poem.  See what she says about it here.

“On the First Tee with Charles Wright,” by Jon Loomis (in The Pleasure Principle (Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College Press, 2001): 18).

“Parade,” by Nate Klug

“A Fixed Idea,” by Amy Lowell

“Not Swans,” by Susan Ludvigson

Ludvigson’s poem is perhaps a “symbol-to-intimation” poem…

“Falling,” by W. S. Merwin (in The Shadow of Sirius, p. 104).

“The Mole,” by W. S. Merwin (in The Shadow of Sirius, pp. 64-5).

“This is the Latest,” by Ange Mlinko

“Ephemeroptera,” by Bill Morgan

“Hospital Barge at Cerisy,” by Wilfred Owen

“On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial,” by Linda Pastan

“Motive,” by Don Paterson (in Rain (New York: FSG, 2009): 39).

“Why Do You Stay Up So Late?,” by Don Paterson  Paterson reads this poem here.  As its title indicates, this poem also makes use of the question-and-answer structure.

“The Rabbit Catcher,” by Sylvia Plath

“A Winter Night,” by Robin Robertson–a version of a poem by Tomas Transtromer

“Organized Religion,” by Frederick Seidel (in Ooga-Booga (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006): 67-68).

“Dog and Owner,” by Alan Shapiro (in Old War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008): 14-15).

“Language,” by Alan Shapiro (in Old War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008): 81).

“Ted’s Head,” by Rod Smith

“Waterfall,” by Greg Williamson

And here are some poems in which ”poetry” (or “the poet”) specifically supplies the metaphor’s ultimate meaning:

“The Albatross,” by Charles Baudelaire

“The Hen,” by Zbigniew Herbert

“The Bear,” by Galway Kinnell

“The Clerks,” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

For some additional information on “The Clerks,” see here.

“The Box Turtle,” by Patricia Carlin

“The Box Turtle” features its own spin on the metaphor-to-meaning structure: at the end of its description of the box turtle, it claims, “And there is no metaphor in this.  No poetry.”  Perhaps these concluding statements are true, but they are also a bit ironic, delivered at the end…of a poem.

Some poems reverse the metaphor-to-meaning structure, supplying the meaning first and then developing the metaphor.  Here are a few examples:

“The Flower,” by Michael Fried (in The Next Bend in the Road, p. 56).

“Thinking,” by Jorie Graham (in The Errancy (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1997): 40-1).  (In “Thinking,” the title serves as the meaning–the poem offers the metaphor.)

“Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk–,” by Jane Hirshfield (in Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems (New York: HarperCollins, 2001): 24.)

“Food Court,” by Tony Hoagland (in Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2010): 4).

“Not Renouncing,” by Tony Hoagland (in Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2010): 78-9).

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” by John Keats

“Because You Asked about the Difference between Poetry and Prose,” by Howard Nemerov

The meaning of Nemerov’s poem is in the title; the poem offers the metaphor.

“Silence,” by Gregory Orr (in Burning the Empty Nests (New York: Harper & Row, 1973); reprinted in Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations, by Robert Bly (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008): 114).

“For Once,” by Don Paterson (in Rain (New York: FSG, 2009): 5).

“On the Sale by Auction of Keats’s Love Letters,” by Oscar Wilde

And here are some other variations on the structure:

Fragment 6, by Alcaeus  In this fragment, the image of the storm-tossed ship is understood to be a metaphor for the state subjected to political turmoil.

In “Securitization,” Ange Mlinko employs the metaphor-to-meaning structure in the poem’s first part.

And if you take out the final six lines of Yvor Winters’s “Before Disaster” (as John Ciardi recommends in the final chapter of his book How Does a Poem Mean?), his poem becomes another which employs the metaphor-to-meaning structure.

“The Riddle of the Sphinx Moth,” by Sarah Hannah  A metaphor-to-meaning poem that (ironically, and poignantly) questions its own operation.

“Handle,” by J. Allyn Rosser  A poem which clearly starts as a metaphor-to-meaning poem (beginning, “Like the handle…”), but, at the turn, instead of confidently stating its meaning, the poem instead enacts its own inability to “handle” its materials, delivering an avalanche of thoughts.

“Sheep’s Cheese,” by Jane Hirshfield  In its penultimate line, this poem denies that it is trying to make a metaphor out of the poem’s materials (“The wheels are only sheep’s milk, not ripening souls”).  But the suggestion is enough–yes?–to animate (to give anima–spirit, or soul–to) the inanimate.

“One of the Butterflies,” by W. S. Merwin  Merwin’s poem, in fact, is structured more as a “list-with-a-twist,” but its conceit is that of the metaphor-to-meaning: the way that pleasure and the human interact is like the way that butterflies and humans interact…

“The Term,” by William Carlos Williams  Another variant on the structure: Williams announces what his image is NOT a metaphor for.

“Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight,” by Wallace Stevens  Stevens uses the expectation that his observation/description of the bouquet will turn into a metaphor as a way to highlight the singularity of the roses, and the moment they are a part of.  (Note: though this poem seems to strive to place the roses “beyond the rhetorician’s touch,” the poem is a rhetorical tour de force.)