Best Metaphors and Similes
2008 July 17
what are your favorite metaphors and similes from literature/poetry/lyrics?
I’ll get it started with some favorite examples from songs I’ve talked a lot about recently:
“You held onto me like I was a crucifix” – Leonard Cohen (So Long, Marianne)
“Daniel drinks his weight, drinks like Richard Burton, dance like John Travolta, now” – Tim Booth/James (Getting Away With It All Messed Up)
“I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch, but love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah” – Leonard Cohen (Hallelujah).
“Her eyes were like chocolate-dipped cherry bombs with their fuses lit.” – Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
I thought of a few more:
“‘Fools,’ said I, ‘you do not know/Silence like a cancer grows…’” – Paul Simon (The Sounds of Silence)
“they hang like grapes/from vines that shine/
and warm the lovers’ glass like friendly wine…” – Woody Guthrie (California Stars)
hello
is eddy here
i just want to ask how i can be a beter metaphors rapper??
how can i use it?
Wow, favorite metaphors/similies is a tough one. Definitely a good blog to start up though. Here’s one of my favs metaphor/similies (from a poem by Steve Gehrke called “Self Portrait as Head of Goliath”, an ekphrastic poem about Caravaggio’s “David and Goliath):
when he stared
into the spotlight of his face,
his head swinging in David’s hand,
like a lantern, as if it might guide
them, fearless, through the valley
of their myth, he felt the self evaporate,
the way a reflection is absorbed
into a stained-glass window
(beautiful, huh? All of Gehrke’s poetry is packed with stuff like this…)
that’s awesome. For some reason it reminded me of lines from “City of Electric Light” by Chad VanGaalen:
“And I thought you were the moon in the sky
But it turned out you were just a street light …”
“And I thought you were the moon in the skies
But it turned out you were just a pair of eyes…”
the music really makes it work.
got more green that a veggie garden
i’m the boss so i dont need to parden
this is the begining, i’m just startin
sick so sick like i’m barfin
like weezy i’m a martain
its the art with in
on point like a dart
can’t push me like a shoppin cart
got more dudes in my crew than a army crew
bitches that are charming too
i’m alarming too
that buzz sound isnt waking you up
its like taking you
turn into leaves, i’m raking you
like powder in milk i’m shaking you
like the ovens on, i’m baking you
im not hungry
but i’m hung you agree
that was off the top
Long chunks of things because I can’t bring myself to pull them too far from context. These are the most influential in my personal narrative, not necessarily what I think are empirically the Best.
“And the moon is a sliver of silver
Like a shaving that fell on the floor of a Carpenter’s shop
And every house must have it’s builder
And I awoke in the house of God” – Rich Mullins, the Color Green
“Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.” – Julia Kasdorf, from First Gestures, in the book Eve’s Striptease (I love, love this book)
I love the implicit comparison here:
“I could give all to Time except-except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There
And what I would not part with, I have kept.” Robert Frost
” . . . There’s a moment every spring:
the tight-fisted cherry blosson, one wee, brown boned, the next,
pink knucked, the following, petal
confetti cobble . . . ” Walt Aikens, Mangos, from The Odds Maker’s Litany. It’s in a poem about Philly in the spring
make that week, not wee. sigh. sorry Walt