Metaphor as Holodeck

Tomorrow I teach the metaphor.


I know of few more powerful linguistic tools for conveying experience. Imagine, I will ask my students, that you must describe a candle flame to a blind person. Imagine that the person has never been able to see. Avoid using color words. Avoid "looks like."  They will struggle to resist visual terms, get a little frustrated, try to pull the language from the experience "as if" -- and that is exactly where I want them to be. I want to take them through the full arc of that tire swing, from experience to page, because metaphor, if it is anything, offers the chance to live through language. To live through someone else's life through language. It is a verbal simulation. And I want them to try to share their experience with the candle - and ultimately their own lives - with someone who will never, ever be able to know it as they do.


(I think of lines from Marge Piercy's "Simple-song":
We are not different nor alike
but each strange in his leather body
sealed in skin and reaching out clumsy hands)


Here's the layout of my classroom as I left it this evening.( Forgive the foggy image; I am learning how to use my new iphone.)

After debriefing the candle flame introduction (writing down student descriptions, probing word choice, discussing what difficulties emerged in trying to describe the candle), I'll talk about what students have just done. That they've tried to convey an experience to someone who can't possibly experience what they, themselves, know. And that's when I'll introduce the actual term: metaphor.


In metaphor, word choice is essential. The layout of my board invites comparison. To the left, I have pre-written a list of trigger words: freedom, love, boredom, loneliness, fear, and various states of being. On the far right, in yellow, I have written a list of concrete terms like river, fire, stone, and mountain. These words are by no means random. I tried to select words familiar to students. The choice of colors is also deliberate: the yellow paper is an attempt to highlight that, in writing strong metaphors, the comparison word is the more critical one. Everyone has an idea about what "love" means, for example. But what will you compare it to? Is it a window, a pitcher plant, a panda or a zip line?


And the blinklight questions: What are their shared characteristics? How are the two ideas related?


And the literary questions: What words best convey my experience? Why this word, and not another?


And the existential ones: Why is metaphor such powerful tool? Why share experience at all?


And here is where my blog entry will end. This day has been a road, and I am home, and the door must close (for now).


(Receding footsteps.)