Undressing the Metaphor: March 9, 2020

Focus: How can we undress challenging extended metaphors in poetry?

1. Warming up with three good things



2. Glimpsing Emily Dickinson's poetry and trying to take off Emily Dickinson's clothes with Billy Collins

• Brainstorming connotations

• What's an extended metaphor?

• What object serves as the central metaphor? (The title often gives it away.) To what/whom is that object being compared?

• What other images and verbs go along with this object? How do they contribute to / shape / extend the metaphor?

• Does the metaphor's meaning shift throughout the poem? How so?

• Try out a thesis that goes something like this: 
• John Mayer uses the extended metaphor of the paper doll in order to...

3. Uncovering the slightly less yielding extended metaphor in "They Shut Me up in Prose"

HW:
1. TUESDAY: Second round of assigned book club reading and syllabus.

2. WEDNESDAY: Academic Vocabulary Quiz #7.

3. THURSDAY: Multiple choice!

4. FRIDAY: Third round of assigned book club reading and syllabus.