As an English major I love using metaphors when ever I don't want to outright say something. Be it in poetry or in describing situations my friends or I find ourselves in metaphors can come in handy.
Let's stop and take a look at the two major uses of Metaphors though, poetry and music (There is a lot of overlap here I know!) Anyway, I'm not sure why, but there is a great schism between those who love metaphors, and those who think they are pointless, English and non-English majors alike. I found myself on the side of those who love and hate them.
When it comes to reading poetry is where I am on the fence about my feelings of metaphors. This is mostly because when it comes to metaphors I prefer them to be easy to catch and clever, not deep winded and leaving you searching for what they were trying to say. I know that can be asking a lot but at times I don't think it's that hard. An example of this is Sylvia Plath's poem, oddly enough called, Metaphors. Now this poem is a 9 line poem with 9 metaphors in 9 syllables each one describing what it is like to be pregnant. Now I found this poem very interesting because of how she was able to use metaphors (A nine letter word, probably not related to the other 9's but interesting none the less) to describe so many different ways at looking at pregnancy. Had she not used metaphors the poem would have just been "I am fat, I am fat, Oh dear God I am fat" 9 times in a row, and let's face it this poem most likely would have been awful.
Now on the flip side, there are times in poetry when people put too much meaning in a metaphor, this causes me not to have any clue what the poet is talking about. This happened when I read T.S. Eliot's, The Waste Land. Now I know this is considered to be one of the better poems of the Modern Era (after World War I) but when I first read the poem, sometime while in High School, I didn't have the slightest idea what the poem was talking about, and thought to myself "Do I really want to be a writer if it means dealing with people that think this is what a great work is" Now that I am taking Modern Literature, with Sister Mara Faulkner, and have read about the time period and how the Waste Land refers to the state of being in America, post-war, and how everyone is "wasted" spiritually, and left empty. This put a whole new spin on everything I knew about the poem. Now this does bring back the whole Barthes and Foucault theory about what does it matter what the author says the metaphor is about but seriously, had I not known what Eliot lived through I would have been left in the dark for a long time.
Now on to music. Music is the one place where I absolutely love Metaphors. It's the place where you can bring a very creative side to important messages by not out right screaming at the microphone. Now, the message doesn't always need to be political like Green Day's American Idiot. One of my favorite songs is one huge metaphor, American Pie, by Don McLean.
Now the main line of this song that resonates the most is "The Day the Music Died" this line is a methaphor refers to February 3rd 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash. Now the song goes on from one metaphor to the next using a play on words to describe the state the U.S. is in after the death of these three young musicians and where music progressed to. Don Mclean could have easily just stated all these events but then it would have been a news bulletin in Rolling Stone magazine, not a truly amazing song.
I believe metaphor are an essential part to music and poetry. It keeps things lively and interesting. If you strip music and poetry the world becomes extremely ordinary and similar, and that is a world I would hate to live in.
I definitely agree with you that metaphors sometimes can hinder the ability to understand poetry. I am in the same Modern Literature class and also had extreme difficulty deciphering what exactly Eliot was talking about. I wouldn't have been able to understand it myself and I think that the metaphors screw me up more than helped me. I also agree that in music you definitely need metaphors or else we would be singing "i love you so much" or "you broke my heart and i hate you" WAY too much.
ReplyDeleteI love metaphors but it is frustrating when you don't know what they are trying to say or sometimes that they are metaphors in the first place. I remember when I was first introduced to metaphors in a classroom when I read Tuck Everlasting in the 6th grade. I was looking for metaphors and similes and I loved all of the beautiful imagery they created.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about how sometimes the use of metaphors can strongly make interpreting poetry or even any form of writing difficult to comprehend. I took a poetry and popular music class which dealt with the structure of poetry and lyrics in music and although metaphors were creative and added a sense of style,it also made me so frustrated at times because it seemed almost impossible to understand what was going on.
ReplyDeleteWhile metaphors can certainly sometimes be confusing, I'm not sure I follow how you think them to be so much different in poetry and music. For the most part, I find that the use of metaphor is often similar between the two. You mentioned that you really liked metaphor in music. Have you never listened to a song that had a metaphor in it that didn't make sense to you or required some background knowledge? Perhaps you might not have minded so much because you enjoyed the work musically, and a confusing metaphor didn't matter so much? Perhaps your aversion to metaphor in poetry derives from the fact that if you don't understand it, the whole work is lost, whereas in music, you can keep humming along?
ReplyDelete