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39.2 Writing about Poetry: Example
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The convention of using slashes to indicate line breaks in poetry makes it possible for writers to display their knowledge efficiently. (It also saves space.) Notice how, in the following paragraph opening, the writer draws examples from three different poems to set the stage for her discussion. She is discussing the difference between a "metaphor," a comparison, and "metonym," a representation of a whole by a part, or by a related object (as in the term "suits" for lawyers or businessmen).
When human creatures are compared to flowers, the trope is usually metaphoric, not metonymic ("O my luve's like a red, red rose, / That's newly sprung in June," sings Burns; and as Thomas Campion sings it, "There's a Garden in her face, / Where Roses and white Lilies grow"). Somewhat closer to the literal is Milton's Eve, who is surrounded by flowers, tends them, and is like them: "fairest unsupported flower, / From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh" (Paradise Lost IX.432-33)...
—Mary Kenzie, A Poet's Guide to Poetry, p. 117
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