A simile should not be apt so much as it should astound. Nothing worse than a simile that's simply true in an explanatory sense.
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
On the other hand, there are similes that are astounding in a phony way. Here's one I remember, in a poem about a young guy whose girlfriend has dumped him: "My dreams collapsed like the Flying Wallendas." That's phony, and what's more, offensive. I'm sure the poet had all kinds of excuses for this thing, but the phoniness of it is all that's astounding about it.
I agree that simile is astoundingly bad. Sharon Olds, a poet who has an equal number of detractors to her many admirers, I think has a bit of gift for outlandish similes that in the end hold together.
Probably a better thought is that the simile should never be a simple equation. As in A = B, which anyone can realize at glance, and thus goes without saying. But rather a good simile should be like: A = (B - C)/2. Something more complex, having more variables, that the mind can't solve easily, yet believes there is a proof behind.
2 comments:
On the other hand, there are similes that are astounding in a phony way. Here's one I remember, in a poem about a young guy whose girlfriend has dumped him: "My dreams collapsed like the Flying Wallendas." That's phony, and what's more, offensive. I'm sure the poet had all kinds of excuses for this thing, but the phoniness of it is all that's astounding about it.
I agree that simile is astoundingly bad. Sharon Olds, a poet who has an equal number of detractors to her many admirers, I think has a bit of gift for outlandish similes that in the end hold together.
Probably a better thought is that the simile should never be a simple equation. As in A = B, which anyone can realize at glance, and thus goes without saying. But rather a good simile should be like: A = (B - C)/2. Something more complex, having more variables, that the mind can't solve easily, yet believes there is a proof behind.
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