Metaphor, Aphorisms, and the Art of the Fine Line

Class Description

Metaphor is most familiar as the literary device through which we describe one thing in terms of another, as when Shakespeare has Romeo say: "Juliet is the sun." But metaphor is much more than a literary device employed by love-struck poets when they refer to their girlfriends as interstellar masses of incandescent gas. Metaphor is intensely yet inconspicuously present in everything from economics and advertising to politics and business to science and psychology. We utter about one metaphor for every 10 to 25 words, or about six metaphors a minute. Fresh metaphors are essential to writing fine lines, the rich, robust sentences that characterize the most compelling poetry and prose. Nowhere is this more evident than in the brief, witty, philosophical sayings known as aphorisms (e.g., "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible"—Stanislaw Lec).

In this lively, interactive workshop, suitable for writers in any genre, we will work with metaphor to create our own impromptu aphoristic compositions, in the process learning how to construct the kind of concise, vivid sentences that linger in readers' minds. Students can expect to leave with a heightened sensitivity to the metaphorical nature of all language, a greater awareness of the psychological influence of metaphors, and a quickened ability to coin fresh metaphors to enliven and deepen their own writing.