Thinking In Metaphors

What we learn from fairytales, myths, icons, and parables is that we need metaphors to make the unknown knowable.  Here, little Thumbelina floats on her lily pad, pulled along by the butterfly, a symbol of transformation.  Later, she will go underground, just as Persephone did, in order to confront death and longing.  Still later, she will become something new.

In the Faulkner speech that Beth sent me and which I included in an earlier journal entry, Faulkner addressed the importance of enduring.  Indeed, that is the message at the rich heart of The Sound and The Fury. 

I ran across the following poem this week.  I think it illustrates something that Cynthia and Vicky have discussed in their journals recently, the idea of confronting the same problems, issues, pains, again and again.  Where do we get the strength to face these difficulties?  How do we endure?  The poem:

THE STONE CRAB:  A LOVE POEM

by Robert Phillips

Delicacy of warm Florida waters,

his body is undesirable.  One giant claw

is his claim to fame, and we claim it,

 

more than once.  Meat sweeter than lobster,

less dear than his life, when grown that claw

is lifted, broken off at the joint.

 

Mutilated, the crustacean is thrown back

into the waters, back upon his own resources.

One of nature's rarities, he replaces

 

an entire appendage as you or I

grow a nail.  (No one asks how

he survives that crabby sea with just one

 

claw; two-fisted menaces real as night

-mares, ten-tentacled nights cold

as fright.)  In time he grows another--

 

meaty, magnificent as the first.  And,

one astonished day, Snap!  It too

is twigged off, the cripple dropped

back into treachery.  Unlike a twig,

it sprouts again.  How many losses

can he endure? ... Well,

 

his shell is hard, the sea is wide.

Something vital broken off, he doesn't

nurse the wound:  develops something new. 

Through the losses of the stone crab, we recognize our own. We see that, like the crab, we must do more than "nurse the wound"; we must be strong enough to develop "something new."  We must transform if we are to endure. How perfect is the stone crab for illustrating this growth!

When we tell our own stories, we must find the right metaphor to make the experience real for readers.  The old adage, "show don't tell," is mostly true.  (Although this adage kept me for too long from giving my stories the necessary exposition--sometimes "telling" is not only necessary; it's best.) 

To tell vivid stories, we need to learn to "see" the world metaphorically, think metaphorically.  Even Hemingway, who is known for his terse, no-nonsense prose, was deeply metaphorical in his writing.

"The Stone Crab:  A Love Poem" by Robert Phillips first appeared in The Hudson Review.  Reprinted in The Pushcart Prize IV:  Best Of The Small Presses.

Addendum:  Vicky adds in a comment:  Sometimes it feels like the shell is soft and we are in a tidepool, going round and round, but it doesn't have to last long.  A moment or two of self-indulgent breast-beating can give way to a channel to the ocean and there we are again, swimming free. growing again. Myth is helpful, but so is the example of everyday folk, people who get up again and keep on going.

See how beautifully she picks up on the metaphor!  And her comment about "every day folk, people who get up again and keep on going" is so apt.  That is why I enjoy reading the journals (blogs).  There is something so heroic in many of them.  And it's refreshing for me to read the words of people writing out of joy and out of frustration and out of need.  Thanks to you all!  What you're doing is truly in the spirit of Faulkner's idea of endurance.