"Marge Piercy's Use of Metaphor" essay, circa 1971
Title
"Marge Piercy's Use of Metaphor" essay, circa 1971
Description
This is an essay by Gloria Kaufman discussing and praising Marge Piercy's metaphor usage throughout her poetry collection. Kaufman showed many examples of Piercy's poetry in this essay to showcase her use of repetition, imagination, and surprising metaphors.
Creator
Kaufman, Gloria
Source
Gloria Kaufman Papers, Indiana University South Bend Archives and Special Collections
Date
circa 1971
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Identifier
Kaufman_Box1_Folder1_K029
Text
Marge Piercy's Use of Metaphor
-Marge Piercy's first two volumes of poetry (Breaking Camp in 1968 and Hard Loving in 1969) have established her as a poet not of promise but of achievement. She can both stun her reader with the plain power of metaphor and she can address contemporary questions of existence. An examination of Piercy's treatment of metaphor is a useful device for revealing
some of her strengths. Piercy's frequent exploitation of the power of the verb gives many of her metaphors a muscular quality:
1
His laugh breaks in his throat to pieces of sun.
2
The gnarled ladder of my spine explodes in petals. 3
Blindness loud as hunger hollows me. Sun melts on my tongue.4 Pyramids of flesh sweat pyramids of stone.5
•
"Breaks," the verb in the first example, is the active principle and the center of the entire metaphor. "Explodes.. in the second example unifies "gnarled ladder" and "petals," while it also expresses a surprising and violent activity that puts ladder and petals into a unique and vividly imaginative relationship. It is the heart of an unusually effective metaphor. In the third example, the initial figure, "blindness loud as hunger," is in itself sufficiently forceful; Piercy intensifies the line yet further by compounding the metaphor with the verb "hollows" (which also activates the figure that it amplifies). Similarly, the verbs "melts" and "sweats" in the last two examples are both central to and activating principles of the metaphors that they unify. The greatest potential power in the English language lies in the verb, and Piercy is not satisfied merely to put the action there (where it belongs). As each of the above lines demonstrate, she effectively locates metaphor in her verbs, and she thereby gives her language a distinct robustness.
Piercy's ability to conceive and to present arresting metaphors is consistent. Sometimes her metaphors have complex concision and they come heavy, one on top of the other. "The simplification" begins
1 a capitalist, a federal reserve of food, a consumptive disease fed with crane and bucket,
''A rolling tank of man, ramparts of flesh,
he trundled in a gnatswarm of obscene joke with his wife slim and grave as a nursing doe"
The military metaphors "rolling tank of man" and "ramparts of
flesh" initially establish a figure of force, bulk, and vaguely
unattractive aggressive strength. "A capitalist" is perhaps
more strongly negative in Piercy's movement vocabulary, and "a
federal reserve of food," yet more so. The latter, on top of
"ramparts of flesh, .. wittily suggests gluttony (it also has
negative political overtones), and the following line moves
• even further in connoting complexities of diseased bulk. "Crane and bucket" transforms the subject into a nonhuman object. Line 4 achieves much of its power because of the progression we have noted in lines 1-3. Line 4 is (in the above sequence) the culminating negative layer of description that contrasts strongly with the understated description of the wife in line 5. She is "slim and grave as a nursing does,u and the quiet, the meekness, the gentleness of the doe set in relief the barreling militarylike activity of line 1 and of each of the other negative qualities in lines 2-4.
Piercy handles metaphor differently in "Erasure." The poem illustrates the way in which she tends to unify entire
•
poems by variations and by repetitions of metaphor:
"Erasure
Falling out of love is a rusty chain going quickly through a winch.
It hurts more than you will remember.
It costs a pint of blood turned grey
and burning out a few high paths 5
among the glittering synapses of the brain,
a few stars fading out at once in the galaxy,
a configurtion gone imagination called a lion or a dragon or a sunburst
that would photograph more like a blurry mouse. 10
When falling out of love is correcting vision
light grates on the eyes
light files the optic nerve hot and raw.
To find you have loved a coward and a fool
is to give up the lion, the dragon, the sunburst 15
and take away your hands covered with small festering bites
and let the mouse go in a grey blur into the baseboard."7
Fiercy's metaphors weave in and out of the poem and establish its unity. "Rusty chain" of line 2 reverberates in the "grates" of line l2. "Grey," "mouse," and "blur" occur in lines 4, 10, and 17 as figures of repetition, and additionally the "grey" of line 4 with its association of blood unites with the brain
image of lines 5 and 6. A compound figure of repetition involving lion, dragon, and sunburst appears in lines 9 and
15. Through all these run the variants of light images and metaphors: "glittering" (line 6), "stars" (line 7), "sunburst" (line 9), "photograph" (line 10), "vision" (line 11), "light" (line 12), "light0 and "optic nerve" (line 13), "sunburst"
(line 15), and "blur" (line 17). By the repetitions and
variations of figures, Piercy unifies the poem in a metaphorically
complex way.
The inventive imagination frequently reveals itself by the variety it can endow to a frequently used image or idea. Piercy's
• interest in words precipitates a shower of figures that demonstrate the flexibility of her imagination:
"Words are shutters on the eyes
and lead gloves on the hands. 118
nstiff as frozen rope words poke out lopsided, in a fierce clothespin treble.n9
"Words that foam and dry and harden -10
tear my lips."
"...I scurry with glass words scolding in my chest."11
"The eyes of others are watches ticking no.
•
• 6
The last example involves the specific word "no," and the line
is particularly felicitous for the pun involved in "watches."
There is the sense of watching in that people are looking at
the persona (and her lover) in an unfavorable way, and there
is the weight of the continuous 'watching' that 'watch' as
clock implies. Each tick ("non) is a repetition of social
disapproval.
In "The organizer's bogeyman," 13 "...words stain the room
like dirty water," and in "Juan's twilight dance," 14 a poem
about the infamous Don Juan,
•
"Words were water or weapons •
...his need gleamed like a knife and the words spurted.
He never understood what the women minded. He never could see how he cheated them with words, the mercury words no one could grasp as they gleamed and slipped and darted."
The fusion of "words" with sexuality is particularly apt and effective in the Juan poem. Directed solely toward sexual end, words (as they gleam and slip and dart) are no less than semen. Our list of "word" figures might continue, but as it is, it suffices to demonstrate Piercy's ability to see a single concept or image with imaginative prolixity.
Although Piercy is capable of metaphors of the more traditional sort ("Trees grey ankles wade in the flooding moon
• 7
she more usually surprises us with distinctive originality.
fhat is, whereas any good poet might have described an orchard
as a "confetti of bruised petals," passages like
"What enemy do I race white breathed who blast my eyes with a blizzard of wish and grave1~17
are singularly Piercy-like. They have the element of the unexpected ("blizzard of wish and gravel") that startles, alerts, and leads us to perceive in a way we could not but for Piercy. The total metaphoric concveption of "August, submerging, 1118 a poem that ends, "Search no calendars./ I make the climate in
• which I freeze and burn," again gives us the sense of a distinct poetic voice. In "Landed fish," Danny has"money in the pockets of his desperate George Raft pants," and
..His eyes flicker like leaves, his laugh breaks in his throat to pieces of sun."
The latter line concisely captures an engaging quality in Danny. In "Visitors with too much baggage," the wife "looks about to cry teeth.1120 The use of teeth is both surprising and striking.
Yet the metaphor does not make the poem. Piercy's real strength resides not simply in her ability to construct striking figures, but more particularly in the way in which they fuse
•
8
• (or are fused) into the poem. Meaning and metaphor are perfectly
integrated. We can see such fusion, for example, in the numerous
lines of epigrammatic tightness that are scattered throughout
the two volumes under consideration:
1121
nTenderness is a mosquito on your arm.
1122
"Love is arthritic. Mistrust swells like a prune.
23
"Man eats man with sauces of newsprint."
The first example comes from a poem dealing with an unsatisfactory lover. The line tightly and wryly locates one of the lover's deficiencies and leaves the poet free to explore others. The
• second example comes from a poem about life in communes, and the single line presents two statements, both strongly metaphorical, both powerfully meaningful. They not only evoke the negative and inadequate feelings of the residents of the commune, but they provocatively suggest reasons for their implicit failures. The third example is eie richly suggestive out of context .) ~ a...u-l we merely point out that the figure is in no way self-serving. Once again, metaphor is the vehicle of meaning.
The limits of our essay preclude consideration of Piercy's ideas, but we should not therefore fail to indicate that she deals with problems that are central in our age. One of the dangers of art, according to Iris Murdoch,24 is that art can
function to console us (in situations that call more properly for arousal or indignation or rage). It is one of the special marks of Marge Piercy's genius that in spite of the strength and beauty of her forms, we are at least as much aroused as we are consoled, we participate intensely in the experiences she describes, we become more human and more humane.
Gloria Kaufman Indiana University South Bend
FOOTNOTES
l"Landed fish," Breaking Camp (BC), p. 37. 2"Exactly how I pursue you," BC, p. 41. 3"The organizer's bogeyman," Hard Loving (HL), p. 66. 411Exactly how I pursue you," BC, p. 41. 5"Homo faber: the shell game," HL, p. 68. 6This device, of course, has been consistently used by
poets in the past. It is not unique to Piercy• 7HL, p. 26. 8"Walki·ng 1·nto love ," HL, p. 13. 9nFor Jeriann's hands," HL, p. 27. lO"Your eyes are hard, and other surprises," HL, p. 41. ll"Running toward R.," BC, p. 47. 1211walking into love," HL, p. 12. 13HL, p. 65. 14HL, pp. 21-22. 1511Night of the bear and polar light," BC, p. 40.
160l?ostcard from the garden," BC, p. 53 •
• •
17nRunning toward R., BC, P• 47. 18
BC, P• 39. 19BC, pp. 36-37. 20BC, p. 46. 2111The cyclist," HL, P• 17. 2211com.munity," HL, P• 17. 23"The Peaceable Kingdo~," BC, p. 68. 2411Against Dryness,•• Encounter (Jan., 1961), p. 19
-Marge Piercy's first two volumes of poetry (Breaking Camp in 1968 and Hard Loving in 1969) have established her as a poet not of promise but of achievement. She can both stun her reader with the plain power of metaphor and she can address contemporary questions of existence. An examination of Piercy's treatment of metaphor is a useful device for revealing
some of her strengths. Piercy's frequent exploitation of the power of the verb gives many of her metaphors a muscular quality:
1
His laugh breaks in his throat to pieces of sun.
2
The gnarled ladder of my spine explodes in petals. 3
Blindness loud as hunger hollows me. Sun melts on my tongue.4 Pyramids of flesh sweat pyramids of stone.5
•
"Breaks," the verb in the first example, is the active principle and the center of the entire metaphor. "Explodes.. in the second example unifies "gnarled ladder" and "petals," while it also expresses a surprising and violent activity that puts ladder and petals into a unique and vividly imaginative relationship. It is the heart of an unusually effective metaphor. In the third example, the initial figure, "blindness loud as hunger," is in itself sufficiently forceful; Piercy intensifies the line yet further by compounding the metaphor with the verb "hollows" (which also activates the figure that it amplifies). Similarly, the verbs "melts" and "sweats" in the last two examples are both central to and activating principles of the metaphors that they unify. The greatest potential power in the English language lies in the verb, and Piercy is not satisfied merely to put the action there (where it belongs). As each of the above lines demonstrate, she effectively locates metaphor in her verbs, and she thereby gives her language a distinct robustness.
Piercy's ability to conceive and to present arresting metaphors is consistent. Sometimes her metaphors have complex concision and they come heavy, one on top of the other. "The simplification" begins
1 a capitalist, a federal reserve of food, a consumptive disease fed with crane and bucket,
''A rolling tank of man, ramparts of flesh,
he trundled in a gnatswarm of obscene joke with his wife slim and grave as a nursing doe"
The military metaphors "rolling tank of man" and "ramparts of
flesh" initially establish a figure of force, bulk, and vaguely
unattractive aggressive strength. "A capitalist" is perhaps
more strongly negative in Piercy's movement vocabulary, and "a
federal reserve of food," yet more so. The latter, on top of
"ramparts of flesh, .. wittily suggests gluttony (it also has
negative political overtones), and the following line moves
• even further in connoting complexities of diseased bulk. "Crane and bucket" transforms the subject into a nonhuman object. Line 4 achieves much of its power because of the progression we have noted in lines 1-3. Line 4 is (in the above sequence) the culminating negative layer of description that contrasts strongly with the understated description of the wife in line 5. She is "slim and grave as a nursing does,u and the quiet, the meekness, the gentleness of the doe set in relief the barreling militarylike activity of line 1 and of each of the other negative qualities in lines 2-4.
Piercy handles metaphor differently in "Erasure." The poem illustrates the way in which she tends to unify entire
•
poems by variations and by repetitions of metaphor:
"Erasure
Falling out of love is a rusty chain going quickly through a winch.
It hurts more than you will remember.
It costs a pint of blood turned grey
and burning out a few high paths 5
among the glittering synapses of the brain,
a few stars fading out at once in the galaxy,
a configurtion gone imagination called a lion or a dragon or a sunburst
that would photograph more like a blurry mouse. 10
When falling out of love is correcting vision
light grates on the eyes
light files the optic nerve hot and raw.
To find you have loved a coward and a fool
is to give up the lion, the dragon, the sunburst 15
and take away your hands covered with small festering bites
and let the mouse go in a grey blur into the baseboard."7
Fiercy's metaphors weave in and out of the poem and establish its unity. "Rusty chain" of line 2 reverberates in the "grates" of line l2. "Grey," "mouse," and "blur" occur in lines 4, 10, and 17 as figures of repetition, and additionally the "grey" of line 4 with its association of blood unites with the brain
image of lines 5 and 6. A compound figure of repetition involving lion, dragon, and sunburst appears in lines 9 and
15. Through all these run the variants of light images and metaphors: "glittering" (line 6), "stars" (line 7), "sunburst" (line 9), "photograph" (line 10), "vision" (line 11), "light" (line 12), "light0 and "optic nerve" (line 13), "sunburst"
(line 15), and "blur" (line 17). By the repetitions and
variations of figures, Piercy unifies the poem in a metaphorically
complex way.
The inventive imagination frequently reveals itself by the variety it can endow to a frequently used image or idea. Piercy's
• interest in words precipitates a shower of figures that demonstrate the flexibility of her imagination:
"Words are shutters on the eyes
and lead gloves on the hands. 118
nstiff as frozen rope words poke out lopsided, in a fierce clothespin treble.n9
"Words that foam and dry and harden -10
tear my lips."
"...I scurry with glass words scolding in my chest."11
"The eyes of others are watches ticking no.
•
• 6
The last example involves the specific word "no," and the line
is particularly felicitous for the pun involved in "watches."
There is the sense of watching in that people are looking at
the persona (and her lover) in an unfavorable way, and there
is the weight of the continuous 'watching' that 'watch' as
clock implies. Each tick ("non) is a repetition of social
disapproval.
In "The organizer's bogeyman," 13 "...words stain the room
like dirty water," and in "Juan's twilight dance," 14 a poem
about the infamous Don Juan,
•
"Words were water or weapons •
...his need gleamed like a knife and the words spurted.
He never understood what the women minded. He never could see how he cheated them with words, the mercury words no one could grasp as they gleamed and slipped and darted."
The fusion of "words" with sexuality is particularly apt and effective in the Juan poem. Directed solely toward sexual end, words (as they gleam and slip and dart) are no less than semen. Our list of "word" figures might continue, but as it is, it suffices to demonstrate Piercy's ability to see a single concept or image with imaginative prolixity.
Although Piercy is capable of metaphors of the more traditional sort ("Trees grey ankles wade in the flooding moon
• 7
she more usually surprises us with distinctive originality.
fhat is, whereas any good poet might have described an orchard
as a "confetti of bruised petals," passages like
"What enemy do I race white breathed who blast my eyes with a blizzard of wish and grave1~17
are singularly Piercy-like. They have the element of the unexpected ("blizzard of wish and gravel") that startles, alerts, and leads us to perceive in a way we could not but for Piercy. The total metaphoric concveption of "August, submerging, 1118 a poem that ends, "Search no calendars./ I make the climate in
• which I freeze and burn," again gives us the sense of a distinct poetic voice. In "Landed fish," Danny has"money in the pockets of his desperate George Raft pants," and
..His eyes flicker like leaves, his laugh breaks in his throat to pieces of sun."
The latter line concisely captures an engaging quality in Danny. In "Visitors with too much baggage," the wife "looks about to cry teeth.1120 The use of teeth is both surprising and striking.
Yet the metaphor does not make the poem. Piercy's real strength resides not simply in her ability to construct striking figures, but more particularly in the way in which they fuse
•
8
• (or are fused) into the poem. Meaning and metaphor are perfectly
integrated. We can see such fusion, for example, in the numerous
lines of epigrammatic tightness that are scattered throughout
the two volumes under consideration:
1121
nTenderness is a mosquito on your arm.
1122
"Love is arthritic. Mistrust swells like a prune.
23
"Man eats man with sauces of newsprint."
The first example comes from a poem dealing with an unsatisfactory lover. The line tightly and wryly locates one of the lover's deficiencies and leaves the poet free to explore others. The
• second example comes from a poem about life in communes, and the single line presents two statements, both strongly metaphorical, both powerfully meaningful. They not only evoke the negative and inadequate feelings of the residents of the commune, but they provocatively suggest reasons for their implicit failures. The third example is eie richly suggestive out of context .) ~ a...u-l we merely point out that the figure is in no way self-serving. Once again, metaphor is the vehicle of meaning.
The limits of our essay preclude consideration of Piercy's ideas, but we should not therefore fail to indicate that she deals with problems that are central in our age. One of the dangers of art, according to Iris Murdoch,24 is that art can
function to console us (in situations that call more properly for arousal or indignation or rage). It is one of the special marks of Marge Piercy's genius that in spite of the strength and beauty of her forms, we are at least as much aroused as we are consoled, we participate intensely in the experiences she describes, we become more human and more humane.
Gloria Kaufman Indiana University South Bend
FOOTNOTES
l"Landed fish," Breaking Camp (BC), p. 37. 2"Exactly how I pursue you," BC, p. 41. 3"The organizer's bogeyman," Hard Loving (HL), p. 66. 411Exactly how I pursue you," BC, p. 41. 5"Homo faber: the shell game," HL, p. 68. 6This device, of course, has been consistently used by
poets in the past. It is not unique to Piercy• 7HL, p. 26. 8"Walki·ng 1·nto love ," HL, p. 13. 9nFor Jeriann's hands," HL, p. 27. lO"Your eyes are hard, and other surprises," HL, p. 41. ll"Running toward R.," BC, p. 47. 1211walking into love," HL, p. 12. 13HL, p. 65. 14HL, pp. 21-22. 1511Night of the bear and polar light," BC, p. 40.
160l?ostcard from the garden," BC, p. 53 •
• •
17nRunning toward R., BC, P• 47. 18
BC, P• 39. 19BC, pp. 36-37. 20BC, p. 46. 2111The cyclist," HL, P• 17. 2211com.munity," HL, P• 17. 23"The Peaceable Kingdo~," BC, p. 68. 2411Against Dryness,•• Encounter (Jan., 1961), p. 19
Collection
Citation
Kaufman, Gloria, “"Marge Piercy's Use of Metaphor" essay, circa 1971,” IU South Bend Archives Digital Collections, accessed April 19, 2024, https://iusbarchives.omeka.net/items/show/164.