Here come some examples of things I underline in my literature anthology. Some are great metaphors, some are beautiful sounding, musical poetry, or nail-on-the-head-hitting similes, or sparkling imagery. Words without a sarcastic edge. Words that do not enjoy shocking readers, but that wish to record life as life is, the best and most useful and most adorable and most interesting parts of life. Words that, like puddles, reflect life in true and interesting ways:
Sound:
"...where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea." -Kubla Khan by Coleridge
Characterization/Personification:
Because I will turn 420 tomorrow
In dog years
I will take myself for a long walk
along the green shore of the lake,
and when I walk in the door,
I will jump on my chest
and lick my nose and ears and eyelids
while I tell myself again and again to get down.
I will fill my metal bowl at the sink
with cold fresh water,
and lift a biscuit from the jar
and hold it gingerly with my teeth.
Then I will make three circles
and lie down at my feet on the wood floor
and close my eyes
while I type all morning and into the afternoon,
checking every once in a while
to make sure I am still there,
reaching down
to stroke my furry, venerable head.
--Care and Feeding by Billy Collins
Imagery: (this one hits it for me, the fear of time passing too quickly)
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard
The desert sighs in the bed
And the crack in the teacup opens
A lane to the land of the dead" -As I Walked Out One Evening by Auden
Simile: (and characterization, so great)
"Papa had said don't be so fast,
you're all you've got. So she refused
to cut the wing, though she let the boys
bring her sassafras tea and drank it down
neat as a dropped hankie." -from Summit Beach, 1921 by Rita Dove
Metaphor: (for unrealized dreams)
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
-from Langston Hughes
Metaphor: (for humbleness)
"I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous..." -From The Love Song of J.A.P. by Eliot
Imagery:
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his chlothes on in the blueblack cold...
...I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
--from Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
