Using Analogy for Poetry NL Oct 26

         I have a folder full of articles/lesson plans that I wrote about poetry and some major poetic devices, "Writing Poetry Writing Tips"  [ASR]. Although I addressed using sensory words and using the right word, I didn't tie the devices with emotion. The series on Emotion in Poetry will attempt to tie them together.

         I have discussed how to strengthen the emotion in poetry through alliteration, metaphor and/or simile, allusion, personification, and oxymoron. This issue, I want to try to show how analogy can be an emotion enhancer.

Viv

Next week's editor will be Becky Simpson

Analogy

         According to Prentice Hall's Writer's Companion, "an analogy is an extended comparison in which one thing, usually more familiar, is compared to something less familair. A striking analogy can make a commonplace subject come alive with new meaning."

         Therefore, if I compare a school with a hill of ants, I've created an analogy, if I make the comparison long enough.

         However, we shouldn't confuse analogy with metaphor or simile. An analogy is an extended comparison, not one of just two or a few more words. In poetry, an analogy is often the complete poem. Some people consider an analogy an extended metaphor.

         Let's examine a poem by Amy Lowell which uses the analogy of mares with night clouds. By describing the imagery of mares, she creates the word picture of clouds on a moon lit night.

Night Clouds
by Amy Lowell

The white mares of the moon rush along the sky
Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass Heavens;
The white mares of the moon are all standing on their hind legs
Pawing at the green porcelain doors of trhe remote Heaves.
Fly, Mares!
Strain your utmost.
Scatter the milky dust of stars,
Or the tiger sun will leap upon you and destroy you
With one lick of his vermillion tongue.

from Prentice Hall's Literature Platinum

Also note the comparison of the sun with a tiger.

         A few of my poems are analogies. I would like to share at least two with you:

Dreary Day
by Vivian Gilbert Zabel

The dreary day outside is gray
Without even a hint of sun.
Clouds drag where our dreams once lay,
Trying to destroy everyone's fun.

Without even a hint of sun,
No rainbow can grace the sky.
Trying to destroy everyone's fun,
The storm drives laughter awry.

No rainbow can grace the sky
With drab rain falling, never done.
The storm drives laughter awry
Before the tears have begun.

With drab rain falling, never done,
Clouds drag where our dreams once lay
Before the tears have begun.
The dreary day outside is gray.

         "Invalid Item"  compares the dreary day to sorrow. Tears are rain; grayness and lack of sunshine equals missing joy.

Day's Journey
by Vivian Gilbert Zabel

The day dawns as a journey.
One leaves the station on a train,
Rushing past other places
Without a pause or stop,
Watching faces blur as they pass,
No time to say goodbye.
On and on the train does speed
Until the line's end one sees,
Another sunset down
Without any lasting memories.

         "Day's Journey"  lets us view life as a train ride, one day's travel at a time.

         Hopefully you will now be able to use analogy in your poetry, as an aid in enhancing emotion, or as a way to increase imagery.

Featured Items from Writing.Com

This poem uses both analogy and allusion.

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This analogy may be harder to grasp since the analogy can be found between the relationship with the moon and sun and the romance between a couple.

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Now, Some Words from Our Readers

         I asked in September's issue, "What is the Waltz Wave, and how/why was it named?" The following subscribers will be receiving 1,000 gift points for the correct answer:

St. Patrickraken
         The Waltz Wave was named to honor Leo Waltz, and the syllabic pattern seems to create a wave.

madragdoll
         The Waltz Wave was named to honor Leo Waltz, Manager of Sol Magazine. The form was created by the magazines Managing Editor, Magret Carlisle. The syllable pattern in the lines also seemed to create a wave.
         I'm curious as to what or who Leo Waltz is to deserve such an honor of having his name on a precise, consise, and highly lucid poetry form?
                   ~MaDRaGDolL~

auterpauvre
Vivian:
         Guess you just wanna know if people are reading. I always appreciate it when the Poetry Newsletter introduces a new form.
         The Waltz Wave was created by Sol Magazine's Managing Editor, Margaret Carlisle in honor of that magazine's manager, Leo Waltz. The wave part refers to how the syllabic patern of the form looks like waves.
                   ---Poore

Mothermouse--come visit me
         The waltz wave was named for Leo Waltz who created this form of poetry which has a soothing rhythm much like a waltz. The number of syllabels per line in each stanza increase and decrease in a set waltz like rhythm.

MIKEL
         The form was named to honor Leo Waltz, the manager of Sol Magazine. However, the syllable pattern in the lines also seems to create a wave. This concise, precise, and highly lucid form was created by the magzine’s Managing Editor, Margaret Carlisle.

Margaret
         The Waltz Wave was named to honour Leo Waltz. The lines increase and decrease in a manner resembling waves. Great newsletter!

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani
         I searched yahoo for 'waltz wave' and came up with two poems by Savannah Skye "Earth Children" and "The Goddess Sees".
         Good to read the examples at Sol.
         Hope to use this form when I need its serenity (or just the opposite).
         To answer the question re how and why, your link to Sol magazine gives it:
EDITOR'S NOTE: This concise, precise and highly lucid poem uses a new form, the Waltz Wave. This form was created by Sol Magazine's Managing Editor, Mary Margaret Carlisle, to honor our Web Manager, Leo F. Waltz.
         Neat to honor someone with a new form! Works with the name, too!
         Thanks for your interesting newsletter, Kåre.

Lou-Here By His Grace
         The form was named to honor Leo Waltz, the manager of Sol Magazine. The syllable pattern in the lines also seems to create a wave. Created by the magazine’s Managing Editor, Margaret Carlisle.
         Reading them makes me want to start a slow dance across a creaky high school gymnasium floor in the 7th grade of my mind.

♥Flower♥
         The waltz wave was created in September 2001, by the Managing Editor Of Sol Magazine,(a magazine out of Houston, Texas) Mary Margaret Carlisle, to honor their Web Manager, Leo F. Waltz.

         Thank you for all the correct answers and the added comments or information given by several of you. Those who enjoyed the newsletter, a big THANK YOU.

Elisa the Bunny Stik
         Greetings! Once I get through NaNo, a short story that's a gift, finishing a personal essay and all my class writings, I'll try a waltz wave!
         My question involves the sestina. I've seen this form described as risky, but I find it to be an easy and effective form. What is it about the sestina that leads to people calling it risky?

          According to http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sestina.html
         "One of the most difficult and complex of the various French forms, the sestina is a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. It makes no use of the refrain. This form is usually unrhymed, the effect of rhyme being taken over by a fixed pattern of end-words which demands that these end-words in each stanza be the same, though arranged in a different sequence each time.
         "If we take 1-2-3-5-6 to represent the end-words of the first stanza, then the first line of the second stanza must end with 6 (the last end-word used in the preceding stanza), the second with 1, the third with 5, the fourth with 2, the fifth with 4, the sixth with 3--and so to the next stanza. The order of the first three stanzas, for instance, would be: 1-2-3-4-5-6; 6-1-5-2-4-3; 3-6-4-1-2-5. The conclusion, or envoy, of three lines must use as end-words 5-3-1, these being the final end-words, in the same sequence, of the sixth stanza. But the poet must exercise even greater ingenuity than all this, since buried in each line of the envoy must appear the other three end-words, 2-6.
         "Thus so highly artificial a pattern affords a form which, for most poets, can never prove anything more than a poetic exercise. Yet it has been practiced with success in English by Swinburne, Kipling, and Auden."
         Just trying to understand the instructions gives me a headache. I know that it's a form I'm not brave enough to try to explain in an editorial, at least not yet.

Mrs. Joyner
         Hi, I am fairly new to Writing.com. In this issue you wrote that there are other poetry forms that you have gone over. How do I access information about these other forms?
         Poetry forms: the Sodoka, Rictameter, Sijo, Quintilla, and the Count Up and Count Down.
                   Thanks!
                   Renee

         Here are the links to the drafts of those newsletters, found in my port: Sokoda, "August 3, 05 Newsletter about the Sedoka" ; Rictameter, "Poetry Newsletter June 8, 05" ; Sijo, "April 13, 05 Newsletter" ; Quintilla, "Poetry Newletter - February 16, 2005" ; Count Up and Count Down, "Poetry Newsletter - January 26, 05" .

The question from this issue:
What is an analogy?

         Please post your answer in the text box at the bottom of this newsletter. The first twenty who replie correctly will each receive 1,000 gift points.

Until next time, read and write beautiful poetry.

Vivian