This Week We're Learning the Power of Implication

A week back, we read this poem by William Carlos Williams:

This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Some of you interpreted it as an abusive situation. Some readers interpret it as the temptation in The Garden of Eden. Both interpretations are valid, and that’s the power of metaphor. It can describe something as commonplace and universal as eating plums from a fridge while expanding on massive themes like abuse and religion.

Anne Sexton was one of the first poets to use metaphors taken from domestic life. Before she began writing, poets would wax lyrical about grand and majestic things like nature and art. Anne wrote about kitchen taps and laundry because that’s the sort of life everyone has lived. That’s how literature learned a new layer of universality. We found out that if we could describe the everyday lives of our readers, we could make them feel more.

It’s also how we learned that ostentatiousness isn’t as powerful as poets would like to believe.

Some of you have been struggling with the concept of metaphors and what they can achieve. Today's exercise is to use Carlos Williams’ poem to learn from, writing your own version of an everyday metaphor that implies a less literal meaning underneath. Poetry might be easier since we have a poem as an example, but if you feel you can manage it, you can write a prose poem or fiction prose instead.

For this exercise, we need to use metaphors only, not similes. Similes make comparisons by saying one thing is LIKE another. They help the reader by feeding them the comparator. Metaphors must stand on their own legs without explanation.

The purpose of the exercise is to find out whether you can write an unexplained metaphor that your readers interpret correctly. This is one of the most important lessons you’ll ever learn about writing. It’s the first step towards controlling the thoughts and feelings of your reader without explaining anything. Tomorrow we're going to work on this power in more depth, so call this your practice round.