Metaphors & Similes

The reason poets rely so heavily on metaphor and simile as the common currency of poetry is that it relates to imagery. Metaphor and simile say with pictures and specific objects what abstract nouns cannot. They help clarify, focus, and bring an image to the foreground of a poem. This is necessary to communicate an idea.

"Metaphors set up precise identities between two halves of a comparison" - Ted Kooser

However, we don't want our comparisons to be either A). too obscure and difficult to understand or B). too obvious (bordering on cliche).

Its a fine strand of web the poet scuttles across to anchor two dissimilar points of space. When working with metaphor and figurative language in your own poems consider the relationship between the subject and the object (or setting, event, etc.) The most beautiful metaphors/similes are subtle ones that are both fresh and new, while also being familiar.

Pick words (particularly verbs and adjectives) that correspond to the main metaphor/simile working in your poem. This helps to create tone as well as picture the subject in an effective way. Try to extend your metaphors through at least a stanza, if not the entire poem.

Example:
Martin Walls' poem "Snail" is about a snail. There are a series of "snail-appropriate words found in the poem"

Snail
It is a flattened shell the color of spoiled milk, a bold
Swirl slowly stirred that charts the age of what's
Curled inside with the tension of a watch spring. A creature
That embodies the history of metaphysics: first it exists,
Then it doesn't, then it emerges once again, unrolls
One, then another, eyestalk, like periscopes breaking
The surface of its wet-life. And here's the tongue body
The petal-body, molding its shape to the world's shape.

The snail is compared to: spoiled milk, a horoscope, a watch spring, periscope, flowers, tongue, and the world. By writing about a snail, we consider it in its proper function as a comparison/contrast to other life, particularly ours. If a snail has purpose, then so do we.

Spoiled milk gives us a negative image, but the words bold, stirred, and curled (curdled) all seem appropriate word choices for the comparison. The snail furthermore encompasses the world in an orderly way. It is both a watch spring (human made and intelligently designed) indicating the spiral shape of a snail shell, but also a tongue (natural object) that goes along with wet and unrolls.

All in all there are snail words: eyestalk, swirl (the shell), shell, slow.
It moves slowly, and the pace of the poem is also slow: words like slowly, emerge, unrolls, molds (also connected to the smell in the first line as a double meaning), recall the movement of a snail, leaving a wet slime trail behind it. This disgusting invertebrate is compared to the function of the world--giving this little animal a metaphysical meaning that compares its life with ours.

Note that this a small poem. It doesn't function as a grandiose political idea or earth-shattering observation. It compares (metaphor/simile) us and our human made world to its natural world linking us with nature, reminding us of our own value and worth. Sometimes that's all that's needed.