Figurative Language

http://amythkamble.blogspot.com/

http://www.educationalrap.com/song/figurative-language.html


Click on the above link for clips from the song, and the words.

Here are some:
Verse II
A simile is something that you use to compare
Two unrelated things with an element that’s shared
My mind is like an ocean; it’s as smooth as jazz
But it’s only a simile if it uses “like” or “as”
A metaphor is similar, but watch out!
Be careful ’cause you’ve got to leave “like” and “as” out
My mind is an ocean; my words are a river,
So keep your ears open as I continue to deliver

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Here's a poem full of similes about similes:

Predictable

Poor as a church mouse.
strong as an ox,
cute as a button,
smart as a fox. 

thin as a toothpick,
white as a ghost,
fit as a fiddle,
dumb as a post. 

bald as an eagle,
neat as a pin,
proud as a peacock,
ugly as sin. 

When people are talking
you know what they'll say
as soon as they start to
use a cliché. 

© 2000 Bruce Lansky, reprinted from If Pigs Could Fly...and Other Deep Thoughts with permission of Meadowbrook Press at http://www.poetryteachers.com/poetclass/lessons/teachsimiles.html

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See the metaphors from "The Blind Men and the Elephant," both an illustration for the original poem, and a modern cartoon version of how various people might see the elephant in our times.

See the poem with illustrations at http://wordinfo.info/unit/1?letter=B&spage=3

Simile poems:
POEM

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti -- first stanza

My heart is like a singing bird

                  Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

                  Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

                  That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

                  Because my love is come to me. 

Difference by Mark Doty -- first stanza

The jellyfish

float in the bay shallows

like schools of clouds, . .

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This entire poem is a simile, comparing Native Americans to the deer a Modern Native American author used to hunt: 

A Simile by Navarre Scott Momaday

What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears forward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight

poem by Mia Lyons
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And for you baseball fans --

The Base Stealer
Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tight-rope walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball,
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on!
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate - Now!

----Robert Francis

 Below, see some more literary examples for metaphor and simile: