Black Hippy Chick Day: Mixed and Extended Metaphors

> All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

That’s one of the most famous mixed metaphors in history, and you’ve probably never thought about it as such. It qualifies, though, because people don’t play on stages. They act or perform.

A mixed metaphor is an incongruous set of comparisons—Like cheese and strawberries, they just don’t belong together. If you’re a great satirist, you can use mixed metaphors in a comedic way, but it takes a lot of power and control to achieve that effect. (Think “it’s not rocket surgery” or “You’ve buttered your bread. Now sleep in it” or “The train has sailed.”) If you’re a fiction writer, you can use mixed metaphors to demonstrate that your character is ignorant, but if you’re an amateur writer, mixed metaphors are probably errors you didn’t realise you were making. I see them often in poetry. These kinds of incongruities serve no effect. They require the reader to see a long succession of unrelated images, so they take all the power out of your work and have no logical cohesiveness.

There’s something to be said for extended metaphors: Those are metaphors that the writer builds on throughout the work. Here’s a successful extended metaphor:

Hope is a thing with feathers

That perches on the soul

and sings the tune without words

And never stops at all.

That’s my favourite Emily Dickinson poem. It creates vivid imagery, then builds into the same scene so that the reader can visualise a deeper truth while the image gradually reveals itself in increasing detail. You’ll achieve many parallels in your object of comparison rather than just one. It’s more visceral and adds depth to a reader’s understanding. Ask me. I probably write them every single day.

There is a third approach to mixing your metaphors: By listing a whole bundle of them one after the other. Plath did this gorgeously in her poem, You’re. Here are the first few lines:

You’re

-          By Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,   

Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,   

Gilled like a fish. A common-sense   

Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.   

Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,   

Trawling your dark as owls do.   

Mute as a turnip from the Fourth   

Of July to All Fools’ Day,

O high-riser, my little loaf.

This is incredibly difficult to achieve, so don’t try it at home. Okay, try it at home, but please don’t be disheartened if your initial attempts don’t work.

Exercise: Please write a poem from one extended metaphor. Please also make sure you bring us something original. No metaphors you’ve heard before.