similes

A central duality appears in the work of Henri Cole: the revelation of emotional truths in concert with a “symphony of language” — often accompanied by arresting similes. We are excited to offer this conversation between Pádraig and Henri, recorded during the 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, New Jersey. Together, they discuss the role of animals in Henri’s work, the pleasure of aesthetics in poetry, and writing as a form of revenge against forgetting.

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan and raised in Virginia. He has published many collections of poetry and received numerous awards for his work, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Award, and the Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent books are a memoir, Orphic Paris (New York Review Books, 2018), Blizzard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets, 1994-2022 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). From 2010 to 2014, he was poetry editor of The New Republic. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College and lives in Boston.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This is PART 2 of episode 133.

In today’s lesson, Liz and I will be going through 15 common similes that you’ll hear in everyday conversation. Some are literal, so they’ll sound normal, others are quite random so you may want to write these down in your notebook. If you would the full list of words, with examples and a quiz to make sure you’ve understood them, be sure to sign up to Premium Content at americanenglishpodcast.com. See link below. 

A simile, according to Oxford Languages is “a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.” 

A similes comparison that the words like or as to compare things. 

For example, you may hear someone say that you look like a deer in the headlights if you look confused. This is a common simile and it’s a vivid visual, it evokes the image of a deer standing in front of the headlights of a car. While in a coffee shop in Italy, I had no idea how to order a coffee, I just looked at the barista like a deer in the headlights.

In addition to the word like, you’ll recognize a simile in speech when you hear a comparison made with as, as used twice. In today’s audio, for example, you’ll hear Liz say she feels as old as dirt. Dirt is the brown stuff you use in your garden, you dig a hole in dirt to plant seeds. When something is described as being as old as dirt it means it is very old. Liz feels as old as dirt.

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Today we tackle the idioms:

Giving 110%
Killing Two Birds with One Stone
The Cat's Pyjamas
Mind Your P's and Q's

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In this final episode of  the "Down to Sally's Cove" podcast, Ella Manuel comments on some of the odd phrases and strange words she came across in her travels around Newfoundland.  Most, but not all, are now clearly explained in the magisterial Dictionary of Newfoundland English.

I like to think of myself as a pretty good speaker and writer. I always hated English class in high school and college, though. So, I always got confused between what was a metaphor, what was a simile, and what was an analogy. To me, these parts of speech were so similar, that I didn’t really see a lot of difference in them. (Still don’t, by the way.) However, these often confusing parts of speech are the special sauce to really great presentation burgers. If you use them just right, these items will be like adding the perfect piece of jewelry to a formal dress. They will take a speech that is already pretty good, and make it exceptional.

Five Ways to Use Similes, Metaphors, and Analogies to Add Flavor to Your Presentations.

1) Attention-Getting Titles (and Bullets).
2) Add Humor to Dry Presentations.
3) A Single Comparison Developed Throughout the Presentation.
4) Use them with Other Evidence to Clarify Content.
5) Make Technical Content More Easily Understood.

SHOW NOTES: https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/metaphors-similes-and-analogies-the-special-sauce-for-your-presentation-masterpiece/