Title: Poetic Language – An Introduction to Poetry
Headings: 4
Poetic Language

4 Poetic Language
Poet, Alice Fogel reads Robert Bly’s “Seeing the Eclipse in Maine.”
Alice B. Fogel, former New Hampshire state Poet Laureate, reads Maxine Kumin’s “After Love.”
Alice B. Fogel, former New Hampshire state Poet Laureate, reads John Donne’s ” A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”
Alice Fogel, former New Hampshire state Poet Laureate, reads her poem, “Morning Glory.”
Literal and Figurative Language
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Ted Talk: James Geary, Metaphorically Speaking
Video Lecture: Figurative Language
Some Poems:

Content: That might lead you to believe that figurative language is harder to understand than literal language, and that we should use literal language whenever possible. But that’s not quite true. In everyday usage, figurative language is usually used to help us understand what a literal statement cannot. Its most important job is to make difficult things easier to understand. It is also used this way in poetry. For example, I might say to a child, “A country is like a school with a president instead of a principal.” Here I’m using the figure of speech known as analogy to bring a new concept to a listener. Figurative language is also used to give more weight or authority to a statement. I’m using figurative language if I say, “According to the White House” instead of “According to the president.” This figure is known as metonymy, the substitution of one thing for something closely associated with it.