Poetry is tethered to the absurd.  Unlike drama or fiction, poetry does not have to be linear or logical.  If poetry is too logical, it is called “prose” (“lyrical prose” if music is evident).

I try to have my students embrace this “absurdity” through metaphors.  Metaphors are the most absurd, irrational device in the writing.  How can one know what another is writing of by comparing two dissimilar things?  Yet, writers and readers depend on the metaphor because language lacks.

The constructing of these metaphors is an art.  Yet, most take the metaphors people live with for granted like sweat in July.  Of course, my students listen to hip hop before their 8:30 am class – “raw as a dirty needle” never enters their definition of absurd.  “Love you like a fat kid loves cake” and “brushing the dirt off your shoulder” are not literal, but abstract uses of language that bring the reader and writer closer.  Of course, like anyone who needs the stable and the controllable in his/her life, each of my students complains that these metaphors are really similes; one cannot be the other or else why would language assign a separate term to one another.  My frustration stems beyond wondering how these students cannot let enough control go to let smiles and metaphors coincide yet they allow “raw” to be a “dirty needle” or problems as “dirt on your shoulder”.  Do they lack the sophistication needed to recognize a relationship between two dissimilar things or is their trained obedience to terms learned in high school the extent of their critical thinking skills?