Trying something new here: the "write it in Word, as a Blog Post" option. We'll see if it works.
***
This from Ben Friedlander, over at Facebook: "Tropes involve mental processes; grouping them under the heading 'metaphor,' which is done surprisingly often, is a little like using a globe for a street map."
I remember an interesting discussion of Auden's line, "The hourglass whispers to the lion's roar" (or "lion's paw," in other versions of the poem) that tried to walk students through the set of mental processes it takes to make the line meaningful. Where was that? Reading Poetry, by Tom Furniss and Michael Bath. From the results of this Google search, it looks like the line gets used that way a fair amount, actually.
***
So now the test: will this post? Is it preferable to the usual interface? One click, and we'll see!
5 comments:
Well, it seems to work! Perhaps this will enable me to use Blogger a bit more, since I'll be able to write, think, jot down notes off-line, and then post them at my convenience.
Whether I'll be able to use this feature with more than one blog, I don't know.
Hey, that's a great find! I'll have to look for that book.
Auden's a particularly good poet for teaching the variety of tropes because he relies so much on elisions and rearrangements to produce starting ideas and images and phrases, as in the "low dishonest decade" and "normal heart" of "September 1, 1939." These come from Auden's compression--his craft--as much as from his imagination. Which is a lesson creative writing students ought to be especially happy to learn!
BTW, Eric: I hope you keep writing on this blog. I've missed it!
Ben F.
"it looks like the line gets used that way a fair amount"
And which way is that? I followed one link to Amazon and the other to Google, but I'm not much wiser about it all.
Oh! I'm sorry, Laura: I simply meant that several of the links that search pulled up (especially on the second page of them) had to do with the nature of metaphor or the thought-processes involved in sorting out what metaphorical language means. The line seems a well-known example of a puzzle that can be worked out, with a little thought.
--Ben, I'm glad to be back here. Will try to post a bit more often as the quarter goes on.
OK, I see. By the way, this post is now on the first page of Google results for that particular search.
"The line seems a well-known example of a puzzle that can be worked out, with a little thought."
I've been thinking about poetry, and why I tend to much prefer analysing prose, and I think the "puzzle" aspect of some kinds of poetry has a lot to do with it. Some poems (I'd exclude old epic poems, for example) seem a lot like cryptic crosswords and I think I prefer to have more contextual clues in place before I start the work of analysis.
Post a Comment