Poetry Soup – Ep. 21: Extended Metaphor

Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’d like to talk about another literary technique that is often used in poetry – extended metaphor.

Metaphor is a common technique in poetry, as well as in prose. It is a comparison between two things used to make a point or describe something bigger. The two objects being compared are called the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the thing the metaphor is talking about, while the vehicle is the comparison or the thing used to express the tenor. An extended metaphor, or conceit, is the same as a regular metaphor, but it is longer. Often, an entire poem can be one extended metaphor.

The word conceit came around during the renaissance, in relation to themes in writing. Soon people began to use it as it is used now, as a word for a long metaphor. 

Extended metaphor is a technique that I have personally struggled with. It helps me a lot to see how other writers use this technique in their work.

A popular example of extended metaphor is Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” (“Shall I compare thee to a summers day”) where Shakespeare describes how long youth and beauty lasts by talking about how summer doesn’t last forever and eventually dwindles away. Though Shakespeare doesn’t mention youth outright, we are able to understand his meaning because of his extended metaphor. The poem goes:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare writes that summer is beautiful, but only for a short while. A man’s life and youth, on the other hand, now that it is written about in poetry, will last forever. It is immortalized in words. We understand this from the comparison of human beauty with the beauty of summer. Shakespeare’s extended metaphor helps us understand the poem’s meaning. The type of conceit that Shakespeare uses is called the Petrarchan conceit, a type of extended metaphor where the speaker exaggerates his love for someone. However, this is not the only type of conceit. There is also a metaphysical conceit, which often talks about an abstract idea in terms of a concrete object.

A metaphysical conceit often talks about a spiritual idea or about love. For example, in “The Coronet” by Andrew Marvell, the poem talks about a speaker who wants to weave a crown of flowers for Christ to wear to replace the crown of thorns placed on his head when he was crucified, only to realize that he should be humble and that the best Jesus Christ could do to his crown is to step on it. The poem says, “That they, while Thou on both their spoils dost tread,/May crown thy feet, that could not crown thy head.” In the case of Marvell’s poem, the crown – which is also meant to symbolize the poem itself – is a metaphor for pride. When the speaker should be humble, he is arrogant instead.

Another example of an extended metaphor in poetry is in book 8 of “The Odyssey” by Homer. In this part of the poem, Odysseus is listening to a minstrel singing and is weeping because he is thinking of the war he has been through and all his comrades and men who have died. It goes,

“And Odysseus

let the bright molten tears run down his cheeks,

weeping the way a wife mourns for her lord

on the lost field where he has gone down fighting

the day of wrath that came about his children.

At sight of the man panting and dying there,

she slips down to enfold him, crying out;

then feels the spears, prodding her back and shoulders,

and goes bound into slavery and grief.

Piteous weeping wears away her cheeks;

but no more piteous than Odysseus' tears…”

The extended metaphor in this stanza is the comparison of Odysseus crying because of all the struggles he has been through on his journey and all the men he has lost to a woman crying when her husband dies on a battlefield. However, the image of the dying husband and how it affects his wife is drawn out in detail, making it an extended metaphor rather than just a normal one. The woman sees her husband killed on the battlefield and rushes to him, but the metaphor continues, showing how she becomes a slave of the enemy. Similarly to the Shakespeare poem, it includes a hyperbolic element to help emphasize the depth of Odysseus’ feelings.

A more recent poem that I think is a great example of an extended metaphor is “Tamer and Hawk” by Thom Gunn. The poems of Thom Gunn often take inspiration from those of John Donne, a poet who used extended metaphor in his poetry, often in the form of metaphysical conceits. Gunn’s poem uses the image of a hawk being domesticated so that it only does the bidding of its tamer to express being in love with someone and always thinking about only them. The entire poem is an extended metaphor.

I thought I was so tough,

But gentled at your hands,

Cannot be quick enough

To fly for you and show

That when I go I go

At your commands.

Even in flight above

I am no longer free:

You seeled me with your love,

I am blind to other birds—

The habit of your words

Has hooded me.

As formerly, I wheel

I hover and I twist,

But only want the feel,

In my possessive thought,

Of catcher and of caught

Upon your wrist.

You but half civilize,

Taming me in this way.

Through having only eyes

For you I fear to lose,

I lose to keep, and choose

Tamer as prey.

This poem uses subtle rhymes throughout that create a smooth rhythm. Its flow almost mimics the graceful flight of a hawk, which I think helped me picture the metaphor of the hawk more. In the poem, the speaker refers to themselves as a hawk that has been tamed by a human. This causes the hawk’s life to change completely. It no longer enjoys the things it used to and changes the way it acts for its tamer.

The line, “I am blind to other birds” creates an image of a hawk that, having been domesticated, understands and sees nothing but the human it must come back to. As a metaphor for love, the line is saying how the speaker only has eyes for the person they are in love with, that nobody else is as important to them. In stanza number three, this idea is built on with the lines, “I hover and I twist,/But only want the feel,/In my possessive thought,/Of catcher and of caught/Upon your wrist.” Activities that are so important to birds mean nothing to the speaker of the poem, because they mean he must be away from his tamer, or his lover.

The most masterful thing about this poem is that, though it is all about a hawk, the reader can still understand the meaning behind the metaphor. The metaphor isn’t covering up the message behind it – in fact, it’s making it more vivid. This is something that I struggle with when I try to write an extended metaphor. How do you interlace your metaphor with the idea it is meant to portray, without giving it away completely? Often, I have a hard time connecting the metaphor with what the metaphor means. It’s tough to find the right balance between the two. This is why Thom Gunn’s poem is so inspiring. It references the topic of love while making sure that the metaphor of the hawk is still prominent.

Extended metaphor is an amazing writing technique. Though it’s challenging at first, it’s worth the practice! I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one.