Dear friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about simile over the last few years. I remember learning about it in school. Fill in the gap: His eyes were as green as the hills in ______. Her intellect was as sharp as a ______. Their response left me feeling as high as a ______. Putting things alongside each other. To say this is like that.
Simile is an old technology in language and, in many ways, it falls into the category of category. Years ago, my friend Pat told me that categories were more important than sentence structure. Before verbs could be conjugated, she said, there needed to be a sound — a word, a sign, a gesture — that indicated that this red berry, that path, and that animal were all under the same category: danger. Simile makes a temporary comparison between categories. Simile isn’t just a fancy tool for a little poem. It might be a way of living. Crude, yes. Temporary, also yes. Necessary, often.
However, a simile also needs to recognise its limit. When you say something is like something, you’re also saying it’s not totally like it either. Simile isn’t saying that two things are identical or interchangeable, it’s just making a temporary comparison. So a thing always comes with its un-thing. To say something is like something is also to name that it’s unlike it at the same time.
Christian Wiman brought this into the language of belief when he wrote that unbelief is not the opposite of belief, rather it is an absolutely necessary companion to belief. A thing and its opposite are always in conversation.
All of this is by way of opening a little door into saying something about Christian Wiman, whose latest book is out this week. Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, it’s called. Entries, not Essays. Sometimes an entry is in the form of an essay, sometimes it’s a poem, sometimes it’s a grouping of quotes, selected under a particular temporary category. I read it and was moved by it. I’m not being paid to write this. I’m writing it because I find both his conclusions and his style to be singular, necessary, and rich. He gathers references from disparate books (he refers to his food blender of a mind) and arranges them to ask questions of himself, and then he — and this is one of the things I love — undoes his argument by saying “yeah, but here’s what really happened yesterday.”
There’s integrity alongside the intellect in his writing. That’s what I like so much about it. I am cautious about much God-language, and I wouldn’t conjugate sentences in the way Chris does even if I wanted to, but I stay with him till the end of every entry, because I am curious to be in a conversation with the brilliance of his thinking.
So yes, a shameless plug for a book that made me think. I’d say this even if I didn’t know Chris (I do) or even if I disliked him (I don’t). He has a magnificent interview with Krista from a number of years back that I often return to. Those gorgeous lines of poetry. And that voice. We made a Poetry Unbound episode about his poem “All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs,” too. (Speaking of which, the new season starts back up on January 1st).
Anyway, back to simile. The Epic of Gilgamesh, that ancient Babylonian story/myth/poem, contains an early telling of The Flood. In it, when the people who’ve saved their lives disembark their vessel, the gods — who have not had any food while they’ve flooded the earth — come down to circle around the ark, looking for something to eat. They swarm around it, like flies.
What? My god. What brilliant poet came up with that simile? Gods. Flies. Some small beast that’s drawn to putridity. Something to swat away. Yes and yes. Now that’s a category.
What’s a simile that’s stuck out for you?
Answers in the comments. I’ll see you there.
Pádraig
P.S. My best friend Dave has a poem in The Night Heron Barks, a magnificent online poetry journal that links a poem with a painting. Have a look. The Night Heron Barks are lovely people, and it’s a damned fine poem he wrote: Athena, the Greek God of (among other things) War makes an appearance, as do characters from G.I. Joe, whiskey, mid-life, and vultures. I’ve a new poem up there, too: but it’s my usual fare: Gods and angels.
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Reading Rilke Today
This afternoon, December 3rd at 4pm ET, I’ll join Rilke translator and poet, Mark S. Burrows and Marie Howe, to explore the writings of Rilke and why Rilke’s words challenge and inspire us, offering “words that still ripen in the silences.” Registration is free, with more details here.
Pádraig,
Your question sent me immediately to rereading Ellen Bass’ magnificent poem “The Thing Is” with its several similes on grief and our necessary response to it:
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Simile...
...eludes me, like a lost sock.