critical thinking poems

10 of the Best Poems about Thinking and Meditation

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Thinking and thought loom large in poetry, whether it’s the intellectual exercises of the metaphysical poets, the deep, personal introspection of the Romantics, or the modernists’ interest in subjectivity and interiority. Below, we introduce ten of the greatest introspective poems about thoughts, thinking, and meditation.

William Wordsworth, ‘ Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ’.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky…

This poem was not actually composed at Tintern Abbey, but, as the poem’s full title reveals, was written nearby, overlooking the ruins of the medieval priory in the Wye Valley in South Wales.

Well, actually, according to Wordsworth, he didn’t ‘write’ a word of the poem until he got to Bristol, where he wrote down the whole psoem, having composed it in his head shortly after leaving the Wye.

The poem is one of the great hymns to tranquillity, quiet contemplation, and self-examination in all of English literature, and a quintessential piece of Romantic poetry written in meditative blank verse. We’ve analysed this classic Wordsworth poem in detail here .

Walt Whitman, ‘ Thoughts ’.

In this poem, the American pioneer of free verse Walt Whitman (1819-92) offers a series of thoughts about various subjects, all supposedly coming to his mind as he sits there listening to music playing. The poem begins:

Of the visages of things—And of piercing through to the accepted hells beneath; Of ugliness—To me there is just as much in it as there is in beauty—And now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me; Of detected persons—To me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse than undetected per- sons—and are not in any respect worse than I am myself; Of criminals—To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally criminal—and any reputable person is also—and the President is also …

Emily Dickinson, ‘ The Brain is Wider than the Sky ’.

The Brain — is wider than the Sky — For — put them side by side — The one the other will contain With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea — For — hold them — Blue to Blue — The one the other will absorb — As Sponges — Buckets — do …

A fine poem about the power of the human mind from one of America’s most distinctive poetic voices. The mind and all that it can take in – and imagine – is far greater than even the vast sky above us. This is the starting point of one of Emily Dickinson’s great meditations on the power of human imagination and comprehension.

Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘A Thought’.

This little four-line poem by the author of Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is short enough to be quoted in full here. Stevenson was an accomplished author of verse for young children, as this pithy poem demonstrates:

It is very nice to think The world is full of meat and drink, With little children saying grace In every Christian kind of place.

A. E. Housman, ‘ Think No More, Lad; Laugh, Be Jolly ’.

Taken from Housman’s 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad , this poem sees the speaker addressing the titular ‘lad’ from rural Shropshire, imparting the advice that thinking only leads to depression and to death. Best just to enjoy life and go with the flow:

Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly: Why should men make haste to die? Empty heads and tongues a-talking Make the rough road easy walking, And the feather pate of folly Bears the falling sky …

Walter D. Wintle, ‘ Thinking ’.

Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man; But sooner or later the person who wins Is the one who thinks he can!

Wintle is something of a mystery: we don’t even know his precise birth or death dates, other than that he was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is only known for this one poem, about ‘the man who thinks he can’, which espouses a ‘positive mental attitude’ to life. It’s become an influential motivational poem beloved of self-help gurus and businesspeople.

T. S. Eliot, ‘ Introspection ’.

Composed in 1915 but not published until 1996, more than thirty years after Eliot’s death, ‘Introspection’ treads a fine line between free verse and prose poetry, offering an anti-romantic image to convey the idea of soul-searching and meditation: the mind is ‘six feet deep’ in a cistern, with a brown snake devouring its own tail like Ouroboros from Greek myth.

The words of the poem curl round in a barely punctuated circular shape on the page, mimicking the form of the coiled snake …

Kathleen Raine, ‘ Introspection ’.

Perhaps, as Eliot’s poem suggests, introspection is not always a positive, affirmative process. Sometimes, our thoughts may take us to some dark realisations – such as here, in this poem from the twentieth-century poet Kathleen Raine, where thinking and introspection lead her to think about death.

Raine (1908-2003) wrote some beautifully intense poems inspired by William Blake and her own personal mythology, and ‘Introspection’ offers a nice way into her work.

William Stafford, ‘ Just Thinking ’.

Stafford (1914-93) was an American poet. ‘Just Thinking’ is a short poem about the simple act of contemplation – of a landscape, or a momentary scene from nature – and uses the metaphor of incarceration and being ‘on probation’ all one’s life to convey the way we live.

Nikki Giovanni, ‘ Introspection ’.

The American poet Yolande Cornelia ‘Nikki’ Giovanni Jr. was born in 1943, and rose to prominence in the late 1960s as part of the Black Arts Movement. ‘Introspection’ is one of her finest poems, about a woman who prefers to solve her depression and anxiety (she lives constantly ‘on the edge of an emotional abyss’) by doing something ‘concrete’ and practical rather than dealing in ‘abstracts’.

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Literary Fusions

Integrating literacy in K-12 classrooms.

Poetry and the Four C’s: Critical Thinking

April 2, 2017 By Jessica

In honor of April being National Poetry Month, we are excited to bring you a series of blog posts on the 4Cs in poetry. Today’s post will focus on critical thinking. (P.S. This is what we do! We love helping teachers find ways to incorporate innovative teaching strategies into their already existing content! Contact us if you’re interested in a full or half day professional development. )

(Looking for the other 3 Cs?  Communication  and Collaboration , Creativity  – check them out!)

Critical Thinking in Poetry

When students are given a poem, we want them to think critically about the obvious message as well as the implied message. Thinking critically about a poem includes evaluating, analyzing, and interpreting the message, and students must spend plenty of time with the text applying these skills so they are able to explain their interpretations with text evidence. This will not happen overnight or with one lesson!  Take your time and scaffold lessons to help students be critical readers of poetry!

The high level of thinking we want from our students will come when they have ample time to practice asking questions about what they are reading, as well as make inferences, and have open discussions about what they are reading. The poem will need to be read many times and there are tools to help!  Here are a few:

• Poetry Out Loud .  Another great site where students can listen to poetry being recited.  A huge difference here is that students are reading the poems instead of the author.  There is a lot of power in students seeing other “regular” kids reading poems with enthusiasm.  Not to mention, this is an interactive site if the students (and you) would like.  Your own students could enter contests and competitions.  The first section allows you to listen (just audio) or watch videos of the poem being recited.  You can also find poems and you are given tips on reciting poems.  While on this site, don’t miss the teacher section ! It has strong lesson plans to help you teach poetry.

• Poetry in Commercials.  I always believe we should start with where the students are in their learning.  Students are exposed to poetry through music and other media, but sometimes don’t realize it.  Commercials the kids perk up to usually have a beat or a poem attached.  Use those clips to have students think critically about the poem, why the poem was chosen, and how it is helping to sell the product!  And now, we are teaching Media Literacy as well!  Here are some videos you might like to share: iPad Air , Nike (wings) , Levi’s , Sprite , and Nike (soccer) .
• For a great list of questions to help you prompt students’ critical thought, check out this site .

Happy Thinking!

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Reader Interactions

January 24, 2018 at 1:46 pm

This great for our 6th grade G/T students.

January 25, 2018 at 7:42 am

Excellent! Please let us know how it goes.

October 27, 2021 at 9:33 pm

Thank you for the information. I am looking for more research about classic poetry and critical thinking.

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Amanda Gorman Poems

by Lemi-Ola Erinkitola | Feb 3, 2021 | Critical Thinking and Reading , Critical Thinking Strategies | 0 comments

Overcoming Speech Struggles Through Reading

Despite her eloquence at the inauguration on January 20th, speech and language didn’t always come easy for her. As a child, Gorman struggled with a speech impediment in which she dropped several letters while speaking, particularly the letter “r.” In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, she explained how reading and reciting poetry helped her overcome these issues. Also, she loves the musical Hamilton and used the song “Aaron Burr, Sir” to practice her “r” sounds. “I would try to keep up with Leslie Odom, Jr. as he’s doing this amazing rap,” Gorman explains. “If I can train myself to do this song, then I can train myself to say this letter. That’s been a huge part of my own speech pathology.”

Understanding Black History

In the CNN interview, she also explained that she recites a mantra before she performs any of her poetry. “I do it whenever I perform, and I definitely did it this time,” Gorman said. “I close my eyes and I say: I am the daughter of Black writers, we are descended from freedom fighters, who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.” This mantra may be a nod to author and historian Carter G. Woodson, who is known as the “Father of Black History.” Woodson stressed the importance of black people knowing their own history and contributions to it.

As we begin Black History month, this is the perfect time to revisit black history books by Woodson and others. Woodson wrote more than a dozen books over the course of his career, including his most famous work Mis-Education of the Negro (1933).

Poetry Improves Reading + Critical Thinking Skills

Poetry is a great teaching tool that can help your child improve their reading and critical thinking skills. Poetry teaches young readers about key literary elements and punctuation, demonstrates the rhythm of words, and builds the vocabulary. Poetry also encourages creativity and critical thinking when children are asked to consider the messages within a poem—both the obvious and the implied.

Poets.org is a wonderful website that has a wealth of poetry-based lesson plans for students of all ages.

Here’s a sample lesson plan from the site to get you started.

Generally speaking, the key to teaching poetry is reading and rereading the poem to look for nuances and word choices. As the facilitator, your job is to craft thought-provoking questions that will get your child thinking and talking about the poetry.

Poetry Lesson Format

You can apply this poetry lesson format to fit any age or reading level.

• Introduce the poem and activate prior knowledge. Ask students if they have heard of the topic before, and give relevant background information as needed to help them understand the poem.
• Reading aloud. Read the poem out loud and then have students read it again, either out loud for young children or in their heads for older children.
• Have students identify new or interesting words and highlight them. Discuss the words you chose and define them if they are new vocabulary words. If they are interesting words, ask why they think the poet might have chosen that particular word.
• Ask questions. Avoid yes or no questions or questions that have only one correct answer. For poetry, you might ask how they think the speaker feels about the subject of the poem or how the poem makes them feel. For poems that focus heavily on figurative language or metaphor, push students to figure out what the poet is “really” talking about.
• Conclude with a summation activity. For younger students, you may simply have them draw a picture of how the poem makes them feel. For older students, you could have them read the poem again with appropriate feeling now that they understand the poem more deeply. You can even try a 3-2-1 writing exercise, in which students write 3 new or interesting words they found in the poem, 2 questions they have for the poet, and 1 feeling they associate with the poem.

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Critical thinking Poems

Just breathe.

Breathe in: 1, 2, 3, 4 Hold Breath: 1, 2, 3, 4 Breathe out: 1, 2, 3, 4 Hold: 1, 2, 3, 4, then repeat It is easy to breathe, but Is it easy to just take a breath?

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The Development of Critical Reading through the Reading and Writing of Poetry

How does critical thinking advance through the reading of poetry? How do these two seemingly different skills depend on one another? Simply put: the act of reading poetry develops critical thinking and reading skills in all students, no matter their reading competency.

Reading poetry is difficult. Students who are fast and competent readers often struggle with reading poetry. Why? What is it about poetry that stumps students? And why should reading poetry matter? Poetry demands attention–a hyper-focus, an understanding of punctuation, an ear for the rhythm of words, and a willingness to take time while reading it. This kind of reading is a challenge for students, and even for adults, today. In an age of fast-changing status updates, instant soundbite news, and SnapChat stories, the way we read is changing rapidly. Students are becoming new ‘readers’, or as scholars at University College London term it, students are committing the act of the ‘power browse’–bouncing down a text, hitting the highlights, or surface skimming the text.

Skimming or even browsing is not a new phenomenon. Experienced readers and scholars skim text every day. Many who teach or those who read large portions of texts daily, either literature, long form journalism, lab reports, research studies, legal briefs, or journal articles, have had to learn fairly quickly how to ‘power browse.’ Success in this type of reading is dependent on a knowledge base which many draw on while reading. They are able to fill in the gaps of this skimming with experience with the vocabulary, the subject, the larger argument, or the writing style/previous work of the author. However, students have not yet developed their own knowledge base–that process is still happening. Therefore, when they try to ‘power browse,’ they lose essential parts of the text, often the deeper meaning.

This loss is apparent when reading poetry. Students will try to skim through a poem, reading quickly and trying to capture the meaning of a poem with barely a look. However, it becomes very clear to students that even in a poem of only two lines such as Ezra Pound’s “In the Station of the Metro”–a condensed packed image of despair and loneliness in a modern world–that trying decipher the meaning of that poem is no easy feat. Even at only two lines, skimming this poem will not work. This poem, just like all poetry, requires the reader to be careful, to think about each individual word, its relationship to the words around it, and the multitude of meanings each word can hold. A poem must be read many times–aloud, to a listener, even inside one’s head; and good poems must be read again and again at various times of the day, or at different stages in one’s life because one’s experiences and understanding of the world around them–again, that knowledge base–often influence perception and meaning. Bad poems, on the other hand, also contain good lessons for young poetry readers. Reading to see how a poem does not work, how the lines and words can fail to craft a visual in the reader’s mind, or how the words can miss the mark in creating a sound for the reader’s ear can also help a young reader and writer craft better poems of their own. Once a reader has read the poem literally, only then can a reader begin to piece together a second and third level reading, digging deep into the figurative meaning of a poem.

Here at Morgan Park Academy, our students read poetry for these very reasons: to build their critical reading and thinking skills. Students in Lower, Middle, and Upper School are exposed to different types of poetry from Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming , to the verse of the Bhagavad Gita , to the poetic soliloquies in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , to Langston Hughes’ Harlem , to the work of American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe. From these repeated exposures to poetry throughout their education, students begin to develop close reading skills and improve critical thinking.

In the celebration of National Poetry Month in April, students will immerse themselves in reading and analyzing poetry as well as creative and critical writing. Thus, by the end of the month, students will have practiced and improved their skills as critical readers, writers, and thinkers while deepening their knowledge base, allowing them to make critical textual connections, to construct more in-depth analysis, and to increase their own understanding of the texts they read. As this knowledge base continues to grow and the muscles of critical thinking, reading, and writing are flexed, students will be able to apply these skills to longer texts, allowing them to ‘power browse’ with ease and understanding.

By Sandra Burgess

Ms. Burgess teaches Middle School English.

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Critical Material For Critical Thinking

To me, critical thinking has always been about looking at something, whether a poem, a piece of art, or an idea, appreciating what is good about it, and questioning what I felt was not good about it, while trying to keep an open mind to the opinions of others, but maintaining my own independent opinion. This is something I encourage my students to do; praising independent thought and ideas that are new, even if strange. Also to me, critical thinking is something that requires creativity. But what is creativity? Hodges (2005:53-54) outlines the following as features of creativity:

1. Using imagination

2. Pursuing purposes, aiming to come to a particular finishing point

3. Being original

4. Judging value, i.e. assessing quality, coming up with one’s own ideas, as well as looking at their ideas and those of others in a critical light.

To this, I would add the following in my lessons to encourage critical thinking:

5. Provoking thought, rather than just checking language comprehension, language use and practicing skills.

6. Exposing students to a variety of literature, art and music.

Keeping these 6 elements in mind, below I explore some of the practical possibilities they open up in every day lessons, looking at poems, comics and music, all of which I have experimented with in class and used as platforms to encourage creativity in my students and make learning more fun and diverse. For each, I have included question types I would ask to provoke thought, force students to be imaginative and think creatively and critically.

Poems are a great way to learn language, especially with higher levels. They provide examples of various grammar structures and are rich in vocabulary. They also provide examples of punctuation use, but most importantly, they provide a lot of food for thought. Working with poems, students can explore various themes, look at rhymes, and tap into their feelings and emotions through poetic expression. In class, students can look at shape poems and create their own around an object of interest to them. They could look at poems from various periods of history and from various cultures, identifying elements of politics, or tradition. They could explore deeper meanings and try to read the mind of the poet, each providing their own opinions on what the writer was thinking and why they think so. Another idea might be listening to a poem and drawing the images that come to mind or writing down one’s feelings as they listen to a poem. A good example of this kind of activity might be This Is Just to Say by W C Williams, with which students might pick on feelings of enjoyment, followed by guilt and the seeking of forgiveness. They may also be able to relate to the speaker in the poem, as he describes a normal incident that could happen to anyone.

Questions: How does the shape affect the poem? Do you think the shape means something? Why did you choose that particular shape? Which poem do you identify with and why? What is the poet trying to say? Which lines in the poems tell you this? Do you agree with the poet? Has something like this happened to you? How did it make you feel?

Comics present students with a more colourful and friendly way to do some reading. They provide spoken language in context and expose students to a variety of grammar structures. Their stories and the characters in them are also quite popular with the younger generation who have seen them in movies or animations growing up. The most famous of these are Batman, Spiderman and other well – known superheroes. Working with comics, students can be presented a problem in society that needs fixing, such as bullying in the neighbourhood, or a large company destroying the environment. Students can identify good guys and bad guys, creating a plot around the story of a superhero. This would require the creation of a superhero, identifying his or her super powers, costume details and other information about them. They could then illustrate and write their comic. It seems like a large project to work on and may take some time but scaffolding and breaking it up into a few focused lessons will make it easier for everyone.

Questions: Which character do you like most in this comic, and why? What are my superhero’s options in this scenario? What are the powers that would be most useful to my superhero? Whose superhero do you like the most in the class? Why? What do you like about this plot? What would you have written differently in this comic?

Music Music helps people relax. It provides common ground for discussion and sharing interests. It brings people and cultures together. It also provides language, much the same way as poetry or comics do and allows students to explore emotions and themes in a language context. As such, it has its own place in the classroom, especially with the youth. In class, students could listen to songs they like, sharing their favourite ones and talking about the kind of music they like and why. Students could take lyrics from songs to inspire their own songs, creating one of their own and sharing with or performing for the class.

Questions: Which one did you like better, and why? What was good about the first song? What did you not like in the second song? What do you think of the singer as an artist? Which artists would you like to see do a song like this? Which lines in the poem are your own? How can I change the ones I stole to make them mine? What can I do to make the rhythm better?

References: Hodges, 2005. Creativity in Education. University of Cambridge. pp. 53 – 54

Critical thinking

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Lovely ideas Zahra. I

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4.12: Figurative Language

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

Figurative Language

Figurative language uses words or expressions not meant to be taken literally. Whether you realize it or not, we encounter them every day. When we exaggerate we use hyperbole : I’m so hungry I can eat a horse ; when Rhianna sings about stars like diamonds in the sky she uses simile ; when we say opportunity knocked on my door we are using personification . In addition to making our conversations interesting and capturing our intense feelings, figurative language is very important to the making of poetry. It is a tool that allows us to make connections, comparisons, and contrasts in ways that produce insight, raise questions, and add specificity. Earlier we worked to make words more specific. We changed apple , blue , and boat into golden delicious , turquoise , and sailboat . The changes made the images more immediate and sharper and offered the reader opportunities to understand the poem. Figures of speech are the next step to adding layers to your poems, to adding even more complexity and meaning.

Types of Figurative Language

Figurative language, often the comparison made between two seemingly unlike things, is almost all image-based and, therefore, a good friend of poetry. In fact, some, like Owen Barfield in his e ssay on metaphor in Poets.org, would go so far as to say that poetry is metaphor :

The most conspicuous point of contact between meaning and poetry is metaphor . For one of the first things that a students of etymology—even quite an amateur student—discovers for himself is that every language, with its thousands of abstract terms, and its nuances of meaning and association, is apparently nothing, from beginning to end, but an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified, metaphors. If we trace the meaning of a great many words—or those of the elements of which they are composed—about as far back as etymology can take us, we are at once made to realize that an overwhelming proportion, if not all, of them referred in earlier days to one of these two things—a solid, sensible object, or some animal (probably human) activity. Examples abound on every page of the dictionary. Thus, an apparently objective scientific term like elasticity, on the one hand, and the metaphysical abstract on the other, are both traceable to verbs meaning “draw” or “drag.” Centrifugal and centripetal are composed of a noun meaning “a goad” and verbs signifying “to flee” and “to seek” respectively; epithet, theme, thesis, anathema, hypothesis, etc., go back to a Greek verb, “to put,” and even right and wrong , it seems, once had the meaning “stretched” and so “straight” and “wringing” or “sour.” Some philologists, looking still further back into the past, have resolved these two classes into one, but this is immaterial to the point at issue.

(Owen Barfield, "Metaphor")

Image from Pixabay

“Nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses"

“Nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses,” wrote philosopher John Locke. In short, the way we know anything is through the senses — even abstract idea originates through experience gained through our bodies. And in the case of language’s origin, as explained above, it appears that all words, at their invention, referred to something concrete: an object or a specific action that evoked the senses. As we continue to use words, they evolve, for they live their own life. And when we use a word, we invite its history and permutations into its meaning. Of course, this is all way too much to think about at once in the writing process. But it is why writers revise and cross-examine their diction, thinking out what meanings the word may suggest. Language is naturally symbolic in origin, in its fabric. And an art that uses words cannot help but also have more meanings than just the literal. The following types of figurative language are used most often in poetry:

• Metaphor : A direct comparison between two unlike things, as in Hope is the thing with feathers (Emily Dickinson, “Hope”).
• Simile : A comparison that uses like or as, as in something inside m e / rising explosive as my parakeet bursting / from its cage (Bruce Snider, “Chemistry”)
• Personification : Human characteristics being applied to non-human things, as in irises, all / funnel & hood, papery tongues whispering little / rumors in their mouths (Laura Kasischke, “Hostess”).
• Metonymy : When one thing is represented by another thing associated with it, as in The pen is mightier than the sword (where pen stands in for writing, and sword stands in for warfare or violence).
• Synecdoche : When a part of something symbolizes the whole, or the whole of something symbolizes the part, as in All hands on deck (where hands stands in for men ), or The whole world loves you (where whole world represents only a small number of its human population).

When we read such literary devices, our mind lights up a new pathway between the two things and we discover new ways of thinking about the relationship between these two things. We wonder, how is his love a red, red rose? But before we wonder, our senses have already made a connection. As we look closer at the poem, we begin to explore the idea more.

The following is a poem by Laura Kasischke. Can you identify the numerous metaphors and similes?

Confections

Caramel is sugar burnt

to syrup in a pan. Chaos is a pinch of joy, a bit of screaming. An infant sleeping’s a milky sea. A star

is fire and flower. Divinity is beaten out of egg whites

into cool white peaks. Friendship

begins and ends in suspicion, unless it ends in death. Ignite

a glass of brandy in a pan, and you’ll

have cherries jubilee: sex without love’s sodden nightgown

before your house burns down. Music’s

a bomb of feathers in the air inthe moment before it explodes and settles itself whispering onto the sleeves of a child’s choir robe. And

a candied apple’s like a heartache—exactly

like a heartache—something sweet and red tortured to death

with something sweeter, and more red.

Laura Kasischke, “Confections” from Fire & Flower . Copyright © 1998 by Laura Kasischke. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Alice James Books, www.alicejamesbooks.org.

The poem begins with a sentence that mimics a metaphor — stating something is something else: carmel is sugar burnt / to syrup in a pan . It sounds like a metaphor, but it actually isn't. Carmel actually is sugar burnt to syrup. Rather than a metaphor, the first two lines function as a definition, which sets the stage (note my own figurative language) for understanding how metaphors work in our minds, for whether definition or metaphor, we use the same structure: x is y; our minds equate the one thing with the other. In the poem this happens with carmel to sugar burnt to syrup.

In “Confections,” the opening definition that looked like a metaphor is followed by a true metaphor (or is it?). Chaos is a pinch of joy, a bit of screaming. We take this as metaphor, but because we do, it brings us back to the first sentence. If sentence two is figurative, why isn’t sentence one? And if sentence one is literal, why isn't sentence two? Both are structured exactly the same. Kasischke’s poem exposes the slipperiness of language and syntax: how we use them and interpret them. The poem asks us to examine closely the line between imagination and reality and the role language plays in sorting them out, or not.

The next two metaphors are more imagistic that the previous: An infant sleeping’s / a milky sea. A star / is fire and flower . While we couldn’t "see" the abstraction joy and could only hear screaming , we certainly see a milky sea, and we certainly see a star flaring as fire, and flower. The parallel of fire and flower is interesting because they are so different. A flower would not survive if it were ablaze in flames. Yet, Kasischke’s comparison between the star and fire and flower makes sense to us. It plays not on the science of heat, but on the images associated with fire and flowers: they both spread outward. So, we equate the shape and motion of a star with both fire and flower. Of course, like the comparison of caramel to sugar burnt to syrup, a star actually is a fire. Again, the poem engages our ability to hold two things in the mind at once—just as a metaphor does—only with the poem as a whole, these two things are the literal and symbolic nature of language.

Read the poem "Confections" and continue to discuss the effect of the figurative language. Explore the comparisons deeper: how is an infant a milky sea? How is chaos a pinch of joy, a bit of screaming? Explore how figurative language allows us to use concrete language to relate abstract ideas.

Watch the video: The Art of the Metaphor by Jane Hirshfield, animation by Ben Pearce.

Video 6.10.1 : The Art of the Metaphor

Contributors and Attributions

• Adapted from Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations by Michelle Bonczek Evory under the license CC BY-NC-SA

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, a very funny ('cause it's true) poem about critical thinking.

From Taylor Mali on "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry" in 2002:

In case you hadn't noticed, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you're talking about? Or believe strongly in what you're, like, saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences? Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences--so-­‐called because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true, okay, as opposed to other things are, like, totally, you know, not? They've been infected by this tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone? As if I'm saying, Don't think I'm a nerd just because I've noticed this; this is just like the word on the street, you know? It's like what I've heard? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay? I'm just like inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? Have they been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rain forest? You know? Or do we have, like, nothing to say? Has society become so, like, totally . . . I mean absolutely . . . You know? That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . . whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness is just a clever sort of . . . thing to disguise the fact that we've become the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since . . . you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you, I challenge you: To speak with conviction.

To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it. Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY. You have to speak with it, too.

© Taylor Mali

Reminds me a little of an old song :

Because something is happening here But you don't know what it is, Do you, Mister Jones?

and another song that isn't quite as old:

He's the one who likes all our pretty songs 

And he likes to sing along 

And he likes to shoot his gun 

But he don't know what it means

Damn Dylan and Cobain. Such arrogant, snobby elitists !

(with thanks to Steven Boone )

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