[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Chelsea and Julie—

Thanks, both, for generously spending time and effort in helping me polish this piece.

Chelsea—I don’t understand why a metaphor would be preferable to a simile. The comparison of people to insects is a venerable and shopworn trope. Most often butterflies are chosen because their metamorphosis from caterpillar to pupa to winged adult suggests the glorification of the soul in death. This comparison is so common that the Greek words for “butterfly” and “soul” are the same.

There are other implications of the comparison that could be developed. For example, the emergence of millions of insects all at once could suggest the competition for jobs in the fashion industry, or the piled-up corpses of the winged insects the day after their emergence could suggest the discarding of last season’s fashions. I decided to focus on just one aspect of the conceit in a very short poem: the long amount of time we spend performing mundane tasks in order to have a chance at a few moments of joy and glory.

Julie—Your post made me realize how my human biases conditioned my expectations about how a mayfly would regard the different phases of its existence. Perhaps as they fly around, obsessed with an overwhelming compulsion to mate, starving, they look back nostalgically on the simple, idyllic time in which they fed on delicious rotting vegetation swaddled in soft, comforting slime.

It also made me think that perhaps this poem wants to be about the long apprenticeship necessary for virtuosity in any creative endeavor. I will think about how I might develop this thread.

Glenn

[Chelsea McClellan]

Glenn,

What I meant was just that metaphors are "stronger" (not necessarily better or always preferable!) by means of their nature... the simile being like a thing and the metaphor actually being the thing. I imagine there's a better way to articulate that, but that's all I have right now.

And that comment really only applied if you wanted to have the whole poem become an extended metaphor, since adding a simile on top of an extended metaphor is not necessary and also would risk stepping outside of the metaphor and "weaken" it by doing so.


I like your thought about exploring the "long apprenticeship necessary for virtuosity in any creative endeavor."

Take care,
Chelsea

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

Hi, Chelsea and Julie—

Chelsea—I don’t understand why a metaphor would be preferable to a simile. The comparison of people to insects is a venerable and shopworn trope. Most often butterflies are chosen because their metamorphosis from caterpillar to pupa to winged adult suggests the glorification of the soul in death. This comparison is so common that the Greek words for “butterfly” and “soul” are the same.

Glenn