Poetry is painting with words and is a personal, creative art form that uses imagery and
metaphor. Shakespeare's
stories are resplendent with metaphors. Take a look at Romeo and Juliet with Romeo referring to Juliet as "the sun" or Sonnet 18 with the words: Shall I
Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, and you'll see all forms of metaphor.
Elements used in poetry can also be used in our own writing. Poetry
has subtext, simile, and metaphor; so should good prose. One
of the tricks Ray Bradbury uses is elevating his writing by taking something
simple and transforming it into something beautiful through the use of
metaphors.
Poetry uses symbols, theme, and motifs.
In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien nearly takes my
breath away with prose that often reads like poetry.
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might
die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles
had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried
shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely
restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this
was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required
perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear,
which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were
embarrassed not to.
The "things" that O’Brien’s characters carry during war are literal
and figurative. While the soldiers carry heavy physical loads, they also carry
emotional things, such as, terror, love, and grief. Each man’s physical burden
underscores his emotional burden. Faced with the heavy burden of fear, the men of
Alpha Company also carry the weight of their reputations and showing fear can
reveal vulnerability to the enemy, fellow soldiers, and themselves.
In revising our prose, we need to strive for such excellence in
word choice, deftly including literary elements seen in poetry: symbols, theme, motifs and metaphor. Then we can kick our fiction writing up a notch from
that SFD to something of merit.
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