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Arts & Culture

Metaphor and Simile in Modernist Poetry

Quick fact

Ezra Pound's 1913 injunction 'Make it new' extended to figurative language: he urged poets to avoid 'dilute ornament' and use metaphor as a direct, almost scientific, presentation of reality.

Why this is interesting

You know a simile says 'like' or 'as,' and a metaphor says 'is.' But what if a poet compared a sunset to a patient etherized upon a table—suddenly, the familiar becomes unsettling. Why did modernists break the way we compare things?