Tag Archives: Literature

Blazon (describing various body parts with similes)

READ THIS BEFORE MY MAGNUM OPUS

I tried writing you a love poem, and maybe it stayed a poem, but it’s got nothing to do with love any more. So I’m just going to say I love you here: I love you. And remember when you’re reading the following that it’s the thought that counts. And I hope you forgive me for making you sound like some monster. I ended up drowning in similes, and since I didn’t even know how to begin fixing it, well, I didn’t. Enjoy. XOXO


Each of your eyes is like the finest sapphire
Swimming in a mercury pool,
Setting my heart on fire,
Making my mouth drool.

Your eyelashes stand like reeds
Around those sapphire lagoons,
And your freckles are like seeds
On skin that shimmers like the moon.

I’m scared your hair might blow away
It’s so like dandelion fluff,
Or perhaps like ocean spray—
It shines like a floor that’s just gotten a buff.

Your mouth is like a gaping cave
Forbidden to any bats,
Opal stalagmites and stalagtites pave
The ruby mats.

Your cheeks are like roses, yet hold no thorn,
Your nose like a button all life you’ve worn.

By now I know this poem wasn’t any good,
But I hope I’ve made it understood
That I love you and my heart will never be torn
Between you and anyone else (no matter how hot.)
Because I only want the best, and that’s what I’ve got.


An exercise from Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence
Amazon links used provide me with compensation


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Polyptoton (the stylistic scheme in which words derived from the same root are repeated)


He’d often rehearse being all laid out in the back of a hearse
On his back in his bed, which he never made but laid in just the same:
How he’d cross his arms to hold a cross or a rose
That meant he’d stop all his rising.
He knew he’d stop feeling so tense if he was just living past-tense.


An exercise from Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence
Amazon links used provide me with compensation.


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Alliteration (the use of repeated consonant sounds)


The monk sits in long silence,
Swallowed up by a lotus
In sleep meant to stir the soul.

But now moss comes marching across every stone
And the monk must move to remain alone.


An exercise from Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence
Amazon links used provide me with compensation


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