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.