A good title should be like a good metaphor: it should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

Walker Percy

Dear SunWinkers:

I’ve danced* around it as long as I can. I must come back to the topic of metaphor. This is where I lose* some people. They immediately say, as though they were being confronted with somebody else’s religion,* “I don’t understand poetry!” “I could never write a poem!”

The mission of SunWinks! is to demystify the reading and writing of modern poetry. And so, sooner or later, we must tilt at the windmill* of metaphor. Poetry (as we understand it today) without metaphor is as banal as a greeting card.* Metaphor is the very stuff* of poetry.

*These are all metaphors. I will continue to mark similarly the metaphors in this column.* (yup, that’s another one…)

As you can see already, figurative language (metaphors) makes for compelling…