Category Archives: Poetry

Metaphor

Poetry, ,

Introduction to Metaphors and Similes

What is a metaphor?  Probably the simplest way to define it is to use one.  We use metaphors and similes every day, often without realizing it:

This house is a zoo – beehive of activity                     

Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter – now we’re getting to the sore spot

Your words are music to my ears – your words are bitter medicine.

Some are spending their time poorly – Time waits for no one.

What do all of these have in common?

In each one of these, we have described something by comparing it.

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Literary Techniques

Poetry

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of sounds in “bag and baggage,” “bed and board,” “primrose path,” and “through thick and thin” and in sayings like “look before you leap.”  There are also specialized terms for other sound-repetitions. Consonance repeats consonants, but not the vowels, as in horror-hearer. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, These indeed seem.

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