Poetry Hacks

Simile

What is it? Where one thing or action is said to be 'like' or 'as' another.

What effect does it usually have? Similes enable the poet to bring imagery into the text to visualise ideas or feelings; as well as being decorative, this imagery may engage the reader and makes the language used to express the ideas richer and more suggestive or ambiguous. What else should I look out for? Likening one thing to another makes a connection between them which may be deeper than it seems at first sight; e.g. 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' conveys more than just loneliness, since the poet is presenting himself as free and at one with the natural landscape he is travelling.

An example of how it works … ‘Sonnet 97’ by William Shakespeare:

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee … What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen

In these lines Shakespeare uses a simile to liken the pain of separation with the discomfort and lifelessness of winter; this enables him to flatteringly compare the beloved to summer, and exploit the various associations of these two seasons.

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