Poetry Devices

Device Example 1: Metaphor “In a while, one of us will go up to bed/and the other one will follow./Then we will slip below the surface of the night/into miles of water, drifting down down to the dark, soundless bottom/until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,/below the shale and layered rock,/ beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,/ into the broken bones of the earth itself,/into the marrow of the only place we know.:” (Osso Buco 40-49)
Rationale for selection: Billy Collins uses a powerful metaphor to conclude “Osso Buco”.It’s not profound, or particularly thought provoking but it is very satisfying nonetheless.  After finishing dinner Collins creates a metaphor for falling asleep.  The imagery here is great.  Drifting miles below the surface of the water as a metaphor for falling asleep is spot on.  It almost makes me sleepy right now. But at the end of the extended metaphor Collins calls back to the beginning of the poem. “And best of all, the secret marrow,/the invaded privacy of the animal.” (Osso Buco 6-7). This gives the poem a satisfying end.  By finishing the metaphor and poem on a callback, the satisfying ending is even stronger.

Device example 2: Imagery “I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees/and the latin names of flowers, watching the early light/flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse/and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks” (Nostalgia 30-33)
Rationale for selection:In Nostalgia, Billy Collins uses clear imagery to convey the title emotion.  Particularly in lines 30-33 Collins uses auditory and visual imagery to great effect.  “Surrounded by the hum of bees” (Nostalgia 30) is a good example of auditory imagery.  He goes on to use a slew of fantastic visual imagery. “early light/flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse” (Nostalgia 31-32). The picture of a morning sun reflecting off the windows of a greenhouse is vivid. Collins finishes “silver the limbs of dark hemlocks.” (Nostalgia 33). The sun does illuminate, or reveal, it silvers the limbs.  A fantastic visual image to help end a fantastic poem.