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On Mon, 28 Dec 1998 08:59:34 EST, Doug wrote: >I'm asking, "How deep into the mind do you think >metaphor goes, and what difference does it make to your view of poetry >writing?" Nice of Doug to throw us a big one and then bolt off to Chinon, which is practically a metaphor in itself, all big and butch above its slow and lovely river, must look like a page from a book of hours at this time of year. It's nearly impossible to ditch metaphoric language in any kind of writing, it seems to me, words like "ditch" will keep creeping in. Creeping? No, I don't just mean figurative language, I mean the kind of language which makes links between one wordset and another. I have to say that what impressed 17-yr-old me about "The Hawk In The Rain" was not its metaphor (which seemed rather staid, even then, compared to Dylan Thomas) but its big, muscular NOISE, wow! so unlike anything the Eng Teachers brought us. Metaphor (and I'm including here its derivatives, no purist I) goes as deep as we let it, and it seems to me to be practically impossible to put two words together without making sense at some kind of level, which usually turns out to be metaphorical: I'm thinking of the Sorrentino poem where he sez to the effect of, impossible to say the words "clarinet marmalade" without thinking black and orange. I love that. But do we need the rather-too-perfectly-formed metaphorical trots of the Martians? I'd rather have real life, where the metaphorical language is untidy, and deeper rooted. Happy new ears RC %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%