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:
This poem is beautiful perfection. Thank you for sharing. It sums up my feelings as I move forward in life having, in the past 18 months, faced the death of my father-in-law, a major downsize and move, retirement, and the winding, terrifying path of cancer survivorship. I am learning to “hold life like a face” and say “yes, I will take you.”
It seems like that the thing about staying open to life, to love in any of its manifestations, you must be willing to love what can hurt you, devastate you with its going.
Dear Pádraig, thank you for the prompt and for sharing your new poem. I am still pondering it; so far it has left me wondering, made me feel sad, and questioning. So few words, and so many emotions in a small space. I will read it more times.
So maybe because my brain Is full with the poem, I share the first simile that came to my mind, a silly simile that is part of a song from the musical, “Grease.”
“We go together
Like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong”
Non-lexical vocables or vocalise are names for these syllables in music. Sounds for when you don’t have words. Because young love may be hard to describe or find anything else like it to simile-gize.
Well, Karen, you couldn't possibly go wrong with an oldie but goodie like Grease! So fun to watch and sing (and dance) along with!! Everyone knows it! I was singing it yesterday at work, as a matter of fact. Thank you for this. XO
I thought of a couple of songs for this prompt, too, but yours is perfect, especially in the context you pointed out. Non-lexical vocables! I never even considered that form might have a name. Last night, my parents happened upon a Smothers Brothers skit about the same. 😁
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
-Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
It’s a classic, but damn if she isn’t ever present in my mind. If I could, but walk in the woods, and watch the world unfold itself around me I would. I would do that every day and lift the fallen leaves to find the insect’s eggs, watch the raven’s conspire, and the foxes marry. In the world of simile, we are like, and we are as well as are not. Poetry sheers the veil of existence and we become possibility.
I love this, Sean! Geese calling are "harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place." I giggle a little. I currently have a kindergarten student who squeals with delight every time she enters a room. It's like a cow bell. Guess who's here? She, too, over and over announces her place (and arrival). XO
It's a classic for a good reason. My mother, long gone and much missed, spoke so movingly of the Canada geese flying overhead in her Saskatchewan childhood that I always hear and see them when I read Mary Oliver.
First... I am still stuck on the fact I thought the title of today's post was "Smile and survival." "Why is Padraig writing about smiling and survival?" Which of course, made me smile...
The only simile that I have firmly implanted in my head is the one I wrote in a required writing course at the beginning of college. We had to describe a cucumber using only similes.
I wrote: "it's pocketed appearance is akin to the deep scars remaining from one's teenage years plagued with acne."
My simile was not well recieved nor did it yield any smiles.
At first, this one was a stumper, but two things come to mine (the first possibly more dull than the second...or contrawise)
1. My PhD dissertation was on how images represent things in the world. The details don’t matter except for this: Perhaps representation works through substitution, or a kind of visual simile. I particularly like the way that Pàdraig described it as a likeness and unlikeness. Hmmm. To categorize this as like this other thing, we need to know how it not like that.
2. My mind also went to the way that we describe people, but also groups, through similes as a way to strip them of their identity; to make our experience of them more palatable and fit them into our own worldview and ideologies. “They are like animals” “they act like beasts” and so on. The similes metastasize into stereotypes and misrecognitions. Not sure if this is exactly how it works but that’s where I went to at 7:30 in the morning.
I wish they did, Anna: “Share link, hide comment, delete comment.” Luckily I’ve gotten quite adapt at copying and pasting so that I don’t lose everything I wrote haha.
Thank you Mona. And thank you also Anna. I always read and respond from my phone while making coffee and breakfast on Sunday mornings...I guess I’ll have to have my laptop nearby as well.
thanks for this, Jonathan. I was thinking of how the Tutsi were called cockroaches by Hutu ruling party extremists - language that enabled a genocide to happen. As we see happening today.
Yes. I had a similar thing in my mind in regards to Native Americans, as I just finished up a section with my students looking at how (mis)representations in art directly results in (mis)recognition of Native identity. Those similes — cockroaches, savages — are used to justify any number of atrocities, macro and micro.
I am rereading some poems with the temporary nature of simile in mind, to see the choices made (simile or metaphor?) in a poem. Is it a fleeting thing, or is there more stasis? Is there a hint of an opposite?
Loving this question you posed, Anna Mark, which also came to mind for me as I looked up a favorite simile which was actually a metaphor (I think?) but really just gets to the heart of categories:
From a Mason Jennings' song:
"I was waken late the other night / There was a bird trapped in my heart / I tried to open up and let it out / Before it tore my chest apart"
"A perfect, paralyzing Bliss/Contented as Despair." Emily Dickinson could see that these two states, opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, were the only places where we don't desire anything - in Bliss, because we feel we have everything we want, and in Despair, beause we've given up Hope of getting what we want. What a mind!!!
Hello Pádraig and fellow sojourners. Having grown up on an island, barnacles on boat hulls were a common sight. They create drag and slow down a sea craft and add weight as well. Scraping them off a hull is not a pleasant task as they are sharp and can cut you and leave wounds subject to infection.
So:
The American Ship of State is encrusted with barnacles of dysfunction.
Pádraig, thank you for your compelling message today. This one ingredient is essential for a delicious soup of similes. Everyone will remember TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
“Ghar ki murghi dal barabar”- there is an expression in Hindi that I have heard my dad invoke many times over the years, when he would be talking about something that people from around the world would want to consult him about, but that we (his family) would be too busy to really listen, or so it seemed to him. The expression translates to something like - “chicken cooked at home is like dal.” What it’s saying is - even if you have something special, a real treat, even extraordinary, like chicken, when it’s cooked at home, it’s as if it’s just an ordinary dal (lentils). Dal is something many people in India cook and eat daily. Very ordinary. Chicken, on the other hand, would be something special, a treat.
Why did this simile come to my mind after reading your newsletter, Pádraig? The first few similes that came to mind upon reading your newsletter were rather macabre. But then came your PS. “I’ve a new poem up there, too: but it’s my usual fare.” Ahhhhh. Perhaps it’s because I don’t cook up such things every day, to me, your poem is extraordinary. But to you, it’s dal? I’ll take your dal any day, Pádraig! And, how the subconscious works - a conversation I had with friends after a poetry reading on Friday night involved dal - and you! - Pádraig. A story for another time...!
And wow to David’s poems too. A feast. Thank you, 🙏🏾.
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.
This poem is beautiful perfection. Thank you for sharing. It sums up my feelings as I move forward in life having, in the past 18 months, faced the death of my father-in-law, a major downsize and move, retirement, and the winding, terrifying path of cancer survivorship. I am learning to “hold life like a face” and say “yes, I will take you.”
I am glad it could reflect your experience, and maybe enrich it. I know Ellen Bass' poetry does that for me.
thank you for sharing this, Camille! I love this poem and so glad to read it again now. 🙏🏾
She is one of my favorites. Thanks for sharing this one. Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh warms me and keeps me smiling too.
It seems like that the thing about staying open to life, to love in any of its manifestations, you must be willing to love what can hurt you, devastate you with its going.
Thank you for these beautiful words. ‘...heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;...’
The terrifying breathlessness of grief like primal untamable waves of water
Brilliant, Camille!
Simile...
...eludes me, like a lost sock.
“And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
Like roses miss the dew”
Thank you John Prine, from I Remember Everything
Thank you Lee. His lines swirl in my head like June bugs in the dark of night
Dear Pádraig, thank you for the prompt and for sharing your new poem. I am still pondering it; so far it has left me wondering, made me feel sad, and questioning. So few words, and so many emotions in a small space. I will read it more times.
So maybe because my brain Is full with the poem, I share the first simile that came to my mind, a silly simile that is part of a song from the musical, “Grease.”
“We go together
Like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong”
Non-lexical vocables or vocalise are names for these syllables in music. Sounds for when you don’t have words. Because young love may be hard to describe or find anything else like it to simile-gize.
Well, Karen, you couldn't possibly go wrong with an oldie but goodie like Grease! So fun to watch and sing (and dance) along with!! Everyone knows it! I was singing it yesterday at work, as a matter of fact. Thank you for this. XO
I thought of a couple of songs for this prompt, too, but yours is perfect, especially in the context you pointed out. Non-lexical vocables! I never even considered that form might have a name. Last night, my parents happened upon a Smothers Brothers skit about the same. 😁
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
-Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
It’s a classic, but damn if she isn’t ever present in my mind. If I could, but walk in the woods, and watch the world unfold itself around me I would. I would do that every day and lift the fallen leaves to find the insect’s eggs, watch the raven’s conspire, and the foxes marry. In the world of simile, we are like, and we are as well as are not. Poetry sheers the veil of existence and we become possibility.
I love this, Sean! Geese calling are "harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place." I giggle a little. I currently have a kindergarten student who squeals with delight every time she enters a room. It's like a cow bell. Guess who's here? She, too, over and over announces her place (and arrival). XO
It's a classic for a good reason. My mother, long gone and much missed, spoke so movingly of the Canada geese flying overhead in her Saskatchewan childhood that I always hear and see them when I read Mary Oliver.
That is lovely. Thank you for sharing that with me.
Beautiful, Sean!
This is a beautiful paragraph, Sean. Thank you.
First... I am still stuck on the fact I thought the title of today's post was "Smile and survival." "Why is Padraig writing about smiling and survival?" Which of course, made me smile...
The only simile that I have firmly implanted in my head is the one I wrote in a required writing course at the beginning of college. We had to describe a cucumber using only similes.
I wrote: "it's pocketed appearance is akin to the deep scars remaining from one's teenage years plagued with acne."
My simile was not well recieved nor did it yield any smiles.
Me, too! The “smile” at first glance which, come to think of it, when I realized it was simile instead, made me smile. As did your response.
I read it like that too at first! I am smiling at your poem and its response!
Me too. Must have needed a smile today more than a simile...
I saw "smile and survival" at first, too.
Christina, Maybe it just hit too close to home for many? I smiled and giggled inwardly. LOL. Thank you!! XO
At first, this one was a stumper, but two things come to mine (the first possibly more dull than the second...or contrawise)
1. My PhD dissertation was on how images represent things in the world. The details don’t matter except for this: Perhaps representation works through substitution, or a kind of visual simile. I particularly like the way that Pàdraig described it as a likeness and unlikeness. Hmmm. To categorize this as like this other thing, we need to know how it not like that.
2. My mind also went to the way that we describe people, but also groups, through similes as a way to strip them of their identity; to make our experience of them more palatable and fit them into our own worldview and ideologies. “They are like animals” “they act like beasts” and so on. The similes metastasize into stereotypes and misrecognitions. Not sure if this is exactly how it works but that’s where I went to at 7:30 in the morning.
I think of simile as a micro haiku.
I realized that I accented the “a” in Pádraig’s name in wrong direction and you can’t edit a previous post (why Substack?!) Sorry Pádraig.
hello Jonathan, i think those three little dots at the bottom right of your post allow you to edit : )
I wish they did, Anna: “Share link, hide comment, delete comment.” Luckily I’ve gotten quite adapt at copying and pasting so that I don’t lose everything I wrote haha.
Jonathan, I found that the three dots show “edit” only from my computer, not my mobile phone. If you’ve not already, you might try that.
Thank you Mona. And thank you also Anna. I always read and respond from my phone while making coffee and breakfast on Sunday mornings...I guess I’ll have to have my laptop nearby as well.
thanks for this, Jonathan. I was thinking of how the Tutsi were called cockroaches by Hutu ruling party extremists - language that enabled a genocide to happen. As we see happening today.
Yes. I had a similar thing in my mind in regards to Native Americans, as I just finished up a section with my students looking at how (mis)representations in art directly results in (mis)recognition of Native identity. Those similes — cockroaches, savages — are used to justify any number of atrocities, macro and micro.
I like how simile reminds me of a smile,
how the word simile looks like the word smile,
is just as fleeting,
just as necessary : )
how the word itself slows you down
like a path of flagstones
upon arrival somewhere.
I am rereading some poems with the temporary nature of simile in mind, to see the choices made (simile or metaphor?) in a poem. Is it a fleeting thing, or is there more stasis? Is there a hint of an opposite?
Love is a rose.
Love is like a rose.
Life is a dream.
Life is like a dream.
Loving this question you posed, Anna Mark, which also came to mind for me as I looked up a favorite simile which was actually a metaphor (I think?) but really just gets to the heart of categories:
From a Mason Jennings' song:
"I was waken late the other night / There was a bird trapped in my heart / I tried to open up and let it out / Before it tore my chest apart"
And also as William Carlos Williams wrote - The rose is obsolete
"A perfect, paralyzing Bliss/Contented as Despair." Emily Dickinson could see that these two states, opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, were the only places where we don't desire anything - in Bliss, because we feel we have everything we want, and in Despair, beause we've given up Hope of getting what we want. What a mind!!!
whoa. wow. yes. thank you for this, Vince! (and Emily!). 🙏🏾
I love this entry. I particularly liked your description of simile as technology. And thanks for mentioning the book. I am eager to read it.
I love Sunday mornings with poetry like .... !!!
One of Those Nights
I laid awake tying up loose ends
I couldn’t quite get my fingers around.
How is it after diapers, curfews, graduations, and grandbabies,
life can still feel so undone?
Boxes checked, finish lines crossed, deadlines met
only to happen upon more
begging for attention –
like a basket of dirty laundry with no bottom.
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
- by Longfellow in "Day Is Done"
Hello Pádraig and fellow sojourners. Having grown up on an island, barnacles on boat hulls were a common sight. They create drag and slow down a sea craft and add weight as well. Scraping them off a hull is not a pleasant task as they are sharp and can cut you and leave wounds subject to infection.
So:
The American Ship of State is encrusted with barnacles of dysfunction.
Happy Sunday!
Many of us seem to have read similie as smile. Has reading on computer screens trained our eyes to skim the writing as flat stones on a quiet pond?
interesting...i just edited my post and likened the word to a flagstone path that slows you down upon arrival.
Wow! Good stuff, Lanie!
Pádraig, thank you for your compelling message today. This one ingredient is essential for a delicious soup of similes. Everyone will remember TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
“Ghar ki murghi dal barabar”- there is an expression in Hindi that I have heard my dad invoke many times over the years, when he would be talking about something that people from around the world would want to consult him about, but that we (his family) would be too busy to really listen, or so it seemed to him. The expression translates to something like - “chicken cooked at home is like dal.” What it’s saying is - even if you have something special, a real treat, even extraordinary, like chicken, when it’s cooked at home, it’s as if it’s just an ordinary dal (lentils). Dal is something many people in India cook and eat daily. Very ordinary. Chicken, on the other hand, would be something special, a treat.
Why did this simile come to my mind after reading your newsletter, Pádraig? The first few similes that came to mind upon reading your newsletter were rather macabre. But then came your PS. “I’ve a new poem up there, too: but it’s my usual fare.” Ahhhhh. Perhaps it’s because I don’t cook up such things every day, to me, your poem is extraordinary. But to you, it’s dal? I’ll take your dal any day, Pádraig! And, how the subconscious works - a conversation I had with friends after a poetry reading on Friday night involved dal - and you! - Pádraig. A story for another time...!
And wow to David’s poems too. A feast. Thank you, 🙏🏾.