Peace

The wind is now

a roaring, smashing

monster of destruction,

raking all man's work

from the valleys,

from the vales,

and sends them spinning,

broken flying -

but all of that is

not its core,

its center is in truth

eternal stillness

bright blue skies

and all you hear

are gentle whispers

far away

and unimportant.

by Silvia Hartmann

Introduction to the Metaphor Poem Examples

Let's face it - there is no such thing as a poem that is NOT a metaphor. But people keep asking me about metaphor poems, what they are, and to give examples of metaphor poetry.

So for the beginners amongst us, let's start with the observation that some poems are one single metaphor all the way through, and others use a variety of different metaphors to describe one single thing.

Remember that all language, symbol and metaphor are seeking to describe a REALITY THAT EXISTS for real and outside any one single human being. If you try and reach through the words and the images the metaphor is calling up to the REALITY BEYOND those things, you can get the drift of the ESSENCE of what is being transmitted in a metaphor poem.

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day ..?

To start with, here is probably the most famous example of metaphor poetry in the English language, namely Sonnet 18 by "William Shakespeare" whoever that may have been:

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The cool thing is that old Will doesn't tell us who "thee" would be when they are at home, and leaves it up to the metaphor to explain it to us.

This poem is a riddle, and nicely done at that. But it is easy to solve if we just take the information as is:

What is the one thing about a person that is immortal and grows in eternal lines through time?

The question at the front of this poem is the "set up", the starting point into the metaphorical domain: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

If you want to have some fun, take that same topic and ask another question.

"Shall I compare thee to a golden horse? Thou art more lovely and more fleet of foot! Thou can't be caught, thou can't be caged, thou can't be ridden - free thou flyest over hill and vale ..."

The basic pattern of "Shall I compare thee ..." allows you to GENERATE metaphor poetry at will, so this teaching poem by Will is in a nutshell what metaphor poems are all about.

The title of this article is from an old Russian proverb yet it is very true today in all cultures of the world. It is not the circumstances that you are in that determine your outcome. Given the same circumstances some people thrive while others perish. Let's look at how to thrive.

In the title above the hammer represents the challenges of life, the glass represents the people who are defeated by those challenges and the steel represents the people who use those same challenges to forge a stronger character and go on to become all that they can be.

What is it that the steel people have and the glass people do not have?

Firstly the steel people believe that they can control their own destiny.

Some of these people are totally self reliant and believe that they hold inside themselves the ability to achieve whatever they want to achieve regardless of the roadblocks and challenges that they encounter along the way.

Others believe that there is a higher power that determines their outcomes but that if they ask for the help of this higher power then it will give them all the strength and potential they need in order to achieve their goals regardless of the circumstances or setbacks. All they have to do is then apply that strength and potential to overcome the roadblocks and challenges.

Even though the two beliefs are very different from the perspective of who wields the ultimate power they are identical from the perspective that it is the person himself or herself that thinks the appropriate thoughts and takes the appropriate actions to bring their goal into reality regardless of circumstances.

The glass people tend to see themselves as being at the mercy of their circumstances. Whether they believe these circumstances are controlled by a higher power or by predetermined fate or by pure luck they still believe that they need favorable circumstances in order to achieve.

If you believe that the circumstances hold the ultimate power then you never do more than 'try' to overcome them. The word 'try' has an implication of failing. The steel people never 'try'. The steel people persist and brainstorm and take action until they are successful.

Because the glass people have the underlying model that circumstance hold the power then they are prone to offering excuses to themselves and to others. Excuses are a means to shift responsibility away from yourself and to put it onto something that is beyond your control. Excuses are a way of avoiding doing what it takes to succeed.

The steel people aren't into excuses. The steel people take total responsibility for their own outcomes whether those outcomes are good or bad. When you take total responsibility then you are empowering yourself to triumph over circumstances and achieve your goals.

By taking responsibility the steel people have to develop their own character in order to equip it with the tools for success. They forge the steel by becoming more than they were before they encountered the challenge. They follow the philosophy of working for a stronger back rather than wishing for a lighter load.

The glass people use their mental energy wishing that circumstances would be kinder to them. They assume that the people who do better in life do so because they have a lighter load or because they were born rich enough to be given their own forklift to carry the load for them.

If you choose to be a glass person then your life is in the hands of fate but if you choose to be a steel person your life is in your own hands and anything is possible for you. Which have you been choosing to be in your life; glass or steel?