love and thick metaphors

A cheeky poem of mine from the past

Welcome to Poiesis, where we make and discuss poems and the act of creation.

I spent this morning thinking about my poetry. This is because the creative writing I’m making as part of my research feels like it is going to become a series of poems. I originally thought I would be producing narrative prose — curating a kind of narrative identity, a coherent story arc over chronological time. But — for reasons I will explore in depth in my Research Notes — I think I’m doing poetry. So, I spent the morning looking over the poems I have written. I was surprised to find there has been a gap of about 20 years of no poetry. I’ll write about that gap too but, for now, I’m going to share some poems from the past.

The first one is a cheeky one which makes me laugh. This is because I remember how I composed this poem.

It was back in around 2003, and I was a member of Zoetrope¹. I was writing, reading and critiquing poetry on a daily basis. It was intense.

One day, someone critiqued a poem of mine. Something about a metaphor I used. I can’t remember what she said or who she was or what I wrote. I just remember the sting of her comment: I’d used a dead metaphor. Too familiar. Overused. Unimaginative. Ouch.

I remember the sting and then the slow burn of that critique.

Over the next few days, I immersed myself in reading about metaphors. And then I wrote the below poem. It’s a poem fuelled by indignation. It was published on one of the poetry boards that were popular back then, and won an interboard poetry competition, in April 2003, judged by Mark Yakich. The poem feels so 2000s! But it makes me laugh. Have you ever written something fuelled by indignation?

love and thick metaphors

by Kathryn Koromilas

with a nod to Gerard Manley Hopkins

i.

if i pull a thick

metaphor

out of a thin

hat, will you bring your ruler?

ii.

measure this:

i slide down the curve of your spine and whisper Silk Smooth Paper

(thickness of metaphor, 385 gsm)

i tap the skin there, press keyboard-button bones

(size of metaphor, Lucida Sans 14 pt, Bold)

and make the word dapple

— i'm about to express how your skin is the sun peeking through the trees as

seen fragmented on bare geography--

iii.

someone said it’s all about contraction; making a smaller simile.

the long version:

Wait, wait for me, will you? Adventure tells me I have to go. I'll be back.

Stay. Like An Obedient Pet. Stay. And if you close your heart to all the

others, I'll come back Like A Treat, Like A Fat Chicken Biscuit.

the short version:

Be my Penelope.

iv.

Aristotle didn’t speak of thick or thin, just metafora—

giving you a name

taken from someone else.

You are my Ted

(as in Hughes, Poet-Man-God; height of metaphor, over 6ft tall),

my Sweet

(as in John² or chocolate, weight of metaphor, 90 kilos or 250 grams,

respectively).

Diomedes didn't speak of size but of shifting meaning

from proper to improper, for the sake of:

a. beauty (your dappled³ sunlight smile warms my brow)

b. necessity (i frame you, my dappled-red Picasso, in the tortured gallery

of my mind)

c. polish (your whisper, dappled promise of early afternoon in the park)

d. emphasis (the dapple-drawn puzzle of your heart)

v.

sometimes i'll speak metaphors you won't notice, so familiar

(you're my Araki⁴ bud; my red

my red my red my red my red

rose; will love ever bloom in the desert

of your heart?)

they once must have been vivid

but they've shrivelled;

melted fat into thin common bones.

Death does that.

vi.

watch me pull a thick metaphor

out of a thin hat, call me poet

and love me for it.⁵

Meet me in the comments section:

Thank you for reading. I’m curious: Have you ever written something fuelled by indignation? Also — What metaphors have you most recently used in your writing? Have you imagined any new metaphors?

And if you’d like a poetry prompt.

1. Spend 10-20 minutes researching something.

2. Make list of words, phrases, people, quotations.

3. Choose five concepts and write one paragraph on each.

4. Shape into a poem, numbering stanzas from i - v.

5. Share below, if you like — or let me know if you tried this.

1. Zoetrope: A community for writers, filmmakers and other artists launched by Francis Ford Coppola in the early 2000s. Such a brilliant, vibrant place back then.

2. I remember having a bit of crush on a poet called John Sweet.

3. I first came across the word “dapple'“ in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems. I think he used the word “dapple” a lot in his poems. At school, I found that annoying. Now, I adore that word. I could say “dapple” all day long. Bless all the dappled things!

4. I was fascinated by the work of Nobuyoshi Araki after seeing his work at the Rebecca Camhi Gallery in Athens in the late 1990s. See here.

5. This poem first appears here.