Let me begin by saying I deplore despise and turn away from this book's title. I think it is vulgar and flip. I never ever shopped at Toys (backwards) R Us out of the same aversion. I don't think it's cute, either, to reverse letters in "humorous" oral dyslexia, for example, jocularly, "I norgot your fame." (okay, that is a little bit funny.)
Some quotes from "1. Cloud" from Chapter Two, "Tis Backed Like a Weasel: The Slipperiness of Metaphor":
"Of the hinterlands of the gray matter, where metaphors roam free, our data is all rumor, conjecture, and anecdote."
and then,
"It is a mystery hand going into a black mystery box. The head says, 'fetch me a metaphor, hand,' and the hand disappears under a cloth. A moment later, the hand reappears, metaphor on its extended palm. But, despite the spontaneity and ease of this event, we have only a vague idea of where the image came from. In fact, we don't know. And neither does the hand."
Most people naturally make metaphors, and Aristotle said he could teach everything but. Hemingway didn't have a metaphorical bone in his body. But Emerson, of Emerson Tony Hoagland writes:
"Emerson had it, and metaphor flows out of him like Perrier from some high Swiss alp. Emerson's essays, which are his real poetry, seem basically the result of holding a bottle under that transcendental faucet: all the essays say the same two things (know your worth/try harder), but they say it with enormous figurative variety."
Yowsa! I experience metaphor's "endorphin-like impact" here. Thanks, Tony.
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