This is Poetry Moment on WPSU, a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment, I’m Marjorie Maddox.
Here at Poetry Moment, we delight in language, especially during April, National Poetry Month. All hail to rhythm and image, meter and rhyme, and those all-time favorites, simile and metaphor, the building blocks not only of poetry but also everyday speech. Just try chatting for an hour without comparing one thing to something else. In today’s poem, “Against Metaphor,” Eric Potter looks at what some hate—but others love—about this ubiquitous figure of speech.
Eric Potter has lived in Grove City, Pennsylvania for the past twenty-five years. A professor at Grove City College, he teaches poetry and American literature. His poems have appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Spiritus, Midwest Quarterly Review, and Presence, as well as the anthology Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. He has published two chapbooks and a full-length collection, "Things Not Seen."
According to Aristotle, “The greatest thing. . . is to have a command of metaphor. . . . it is the mark of genius….” Indeed metaphors are everywhere from casual conversation to sacred texts. Nevertheless, Eric Potter begins today’s poem with a complaint. Listen as the disciples of Jesus grouse about metaphors.
Here’s “Against Metaphor” by Eric Potter.
Against Metaphor
-John 16: 25b
When Jesus promised
he’d stop using
figures of speech,
speak plainly
about the Father,
the disciples were glad
like my students,
like the no-nonsense
folks who ask
why don’t poets
just say
what they really mean?
In paradise, apparently,
all speech
will be plain.
So much for metaphor
being a sign
of poetic genius.
So much for poetry,
its intricacies
a function, apparently
of fallenness, a feature
merely
of our unheavenly
existence, trapped
in a world
of slant speech.
But who doesn’t love
the serpentine
tongue,
testing the ice
cream, tracing
the curve
a dog makes
lying down,
who doesn’t delight
in the lavish figure,
the constant
shifting
of beauty’s shadow?
Previously published in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
That was “Against Metaphor” by Eric Potter. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
