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Tue 25 Apr, 2006 07:48 pm
There is an A2K thread titled "Old Friends" which set this song adrift in my head today. I've always like this line as it really evokes a sense of atmosphere.
I had an English teacher in Jr. High that we called "the squirrel" for reasons I can't remember. She was addicted to similies and metaphors. She had us read "The Pearl" and write down every single simile and metaphor in the book. Have you ever read that thing? It is all similies and metaphors -- the entire book. I should have just xeroxed the book.
<sigh>
Anyway. Due to the influence of the squirrel I always notice good similies and metaphors. Some of the best ones show up in lyrics.
Another Simon and Garfunkle one I like is: Silence like a cancer grows.
I'm searching my memory banks for others that I find evocative and now I'm inviting you to share your favorites too.
It doesn't have to be from music. It could be poetry or books or whatever. Are there similes and metaphors that stick to your brain?
Please share!
I've always like the turtle in "The Grapes of Wrath"
from dylan thomas great poem fern hill
"happy as the grass was green"
"And fire green as grass."
"Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea."
"Yes sir that's my savior".
I lived for a spell in Oklahoma and read the "GOW" while there. I had my grandpa fill me in on the real deal.
I agree that the turtle is a good metaphor.
Oh nice, djjd! I need to go read that now!
Like a rhinestone cowboy...
That IS a good one GW. It reminds me of an old friend!
I sometimes called him Merle (Haggard) and sometime I called him Conway (Twitty) but mostly I called him Joe Buck.
I seem to be stuck on Paul Simon or Simon and Garfunkle tonight:
The Mississippi delta was shining like a National guitar.
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
(Does "such are" count as similie? I think it should.)
S&G...I always liked
And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.
I have a hard time singing a George Strait song called "Blue Clear Sky" I always get it backwards...a clever alliteration
Like a rolling stone immediately springs to mind
For the most extended metaphor in a song how about Black Stick by The Cruel Sea?
My heart is a muscle and it pumps blood
Like a big old black steam train
My veins are the tracks
And the city is my brain
My stomach is the ocean and it swallows up the sun
At the end of a summer's day
My breath like a breeze
Blows all those storm clouds
Away
ahhh ... (x4)
My head is the city and it houses all the thoughts
And speech that I have
And the mayor of the city says the city seems ain't half ... bad.
My arms could be weapons or instruments of love
My legs are skyscrapers, they tower
Above you
ahhh... (x4)
My heart is a muscle and it pumps blood
Like a big old black steam train
My veins are the tracks
And the city is my brain
My stomach is the ocean and it swallows up the sun
At the end of a summer's day
My breath like a breeze, blows
all those storm clouds
Away
ahhh ... (x4)
I could be your whole world (x4
Hi panzade and hinghead. Those are both very nice examples and they are both songs that I'm not familiar with so doubly cool!
It's like ray-ee-ain on your wedding day...
Sorry. I don't really think of that as a terribly good simile, but I couldn't help myself.
The first thing that came to mind when I read this post were these famous and oft-quoted lines by T.S. Eliot:
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
That whole poem is just one breathtaking image after another. My favorite one is
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
I'm like a one-eyed cat
Peepin in a seafood store
Also - my sig
One of my favorite U2 songs is a nonstop simile.
Like a desert needs rain
Like a town needs a name
I need your love
Like a drifter needs a room
Hawkmoon
I need your love
I need your love
Like a rhythm unbroken
Like drums in the night
Like sweet soul music
Like sunlight
I need your love
Like coming home
And you don't know where you've been
Like black coffee
Like nicotine
I need your love (I need your love)
I need your love (I need your love)
I need your love (I need your love)
When the night has no end
And the day yet to begin
As the room spins around
I need your love
I need your love
Like a Phoenix rising needs a holy tree
Like the sweet revenge of a bitter enemy
I need your love
Like the hot needs the sun
Like honey on her tongue
Like the muzzle of a gun
Like oxygen
I need your love (I need your love)
I need your love (I need your love)
I need your love (I need your love)
When the night has no end
And the day yet to begin
As the room spins around
I need your love
I need your love...
[Repeat 9 times]
Like thunder needs rain
Like a preacher needs pain
Like tongues of flame
Like a sheet stained
I need your love
I need your love
Like a needle needs a vein
Like someone to blame
Like a thought unchained
Like a runaway train
I need your love
I need your love...
[Repeat 7 times]
Like faith needs a doubt
Like a freeway out
I need your love
Like powder needs a spark
Like lies need the dark
I need your love
In the heart of the heat of the love
In the heart of the heat of the love...
[Repeat until end]
"She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket."
"She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight."
"On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis."
Raymond Chandler
I once read a book (just one) where the was a recurring simile chanted internally by a protagonist - something like:
The world is a coffin. The sky is the lid of the coffin.
I liked that line.
Oh these are nice! Thank you all. I just love an image generating turn of phrase!
While I was reading these I was reminded of a line from a Wilco song that I've always thought was very nice:
"I want to hold you in the Bible black pre-dawn"
Thanks to the Beatles (Dig it), we have --
Like a rolling stone
A like a rolling stone
Like the FBI and the CIA
And the BBC--BB King
And Doris Day
Matt Busby
Dig it, dig it, dig it
Dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it
Ah, boomer. It's a pity that teachers force their thinking upon students.(Hey, girl, I liked The Pearl)
This isn't a song, but one of the most vivid direct metaphors that I became wrapped in was The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight. Wow! Can't you see it?
Well, Panz knows how I loved Hank Williams, "I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry." (no similes, however)
Also, James Joyce.
All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters
All day I hear the noise of waters
Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is when, going
Forth alone,
He hears the winds cry to the water's
Monotone.
The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing
Where I go.
I hear the noise of many waters
Far below.
All day, all night, I hear them flowing
To and fro.
James Joyce
Speaking of teachers, I had one who took us through the Beatles 'Day in the life' and told us the '4000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire' was a metaphor for mining deaths - but the other day I read/heard that it was actually a reference to someone who's job was to count pot holes in Blackburn and John or Paul being amazed by that.
Who knows what's true - and if you write something on acid is it a metaphor or just the way the world looks?
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