Poet's Choice
TOOLBOX   Resize
 Save/Share +
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
|
Metaphors, symbols and myths are not arcane distortions, peculiar to poetry. They are part of thought and speech, sometimes buried like the fact that focus is Latin for a hearth, and sometimes as explicit as the names for hardware: an elbow, or a male-to-female connector. Katrina Roberts considers the ripples of significance surrounding the names for tiny bones in the ear:
MALLEUS, INCUS, STAPES
Six months in utero
my boy's bones begin in middle ear
to harden so sound can conduct:
hammer, anvil, stirrup --
the three smallest of bones though names conjure
bulk and heft (metaphors
make miracles visible)
-- thought's farriers; a word's trickle or timpanic
blow means bones to strike,
taut membranes struck
and that which gently cups beneath to let
