POETRY
when simile smiles on you
you need not force a metaphor
and the speed rate of alliteration
will make you want to pay tuition, for
simple repetitions
you need not force a metaphor
and the speed rate of alliteration
will make you want to pay tuition, for
simple repetitions
hyperbole is a very big ball
ever rising initially with innuendo
ever rising initially with innuendo
take me into the sea of apostrophe
let us impersonate personification
let us dine with ambiguity in unity
and ride along with all sorts of
paradox
let us impersonate personification
let us dine with ambiguity in unity
and ride along with all sorts of
paradox
zeugma will man the gate as chiasmus
waits on full charge
our ironical situation is already
canonical, so let us not stop but
keep getting buried in the mystery of poetry
waits on full charge
our ironical situation is already
canonical, so let us not stop but
keep getting buried in the mystery of poetry
-- Odysseus Elytis
Zeugma ("a yoking together," "bridge-passage" or "bridge of boats" in Greek) is a figure of speech in which one single phrase or word joins different parts of a sentence although the word grammatically or logically applies to only one. It is grammatically incorrect but nevertheless an intentional construction in which the rules are bent by necessity or for stylistic effect. In his poem "Ulysses" Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote, "He works his work, I mine." It may also be a single word used with two other parts of a sentence that must be understood differently in relation to each, in a somewhat punning manner. For example, in the "Angel One" episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," William Riker commented, "You are free to execute your laws and your citizens as you see fit." A particularly extenuated version would be Henry David Thoreau's remark in "Walden" about a house "where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress." "The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms" defines zeugma as any case of parallelism and ellipsis working together so that a single word governs two or more other parts of a sentence, as in the English translation of Cicero: "Lust conquered shame; audacity, fear; madness, reason" [Vicit pudorem libido timorem audacia rationem amentia], in which the sentence has three parallel clauses (because each has the same word order) and the verb "conquered" is elliptically removed in the second and thrid clause. The city Zeugma in Commagene (in modern Gaziantep province, Turkey) was founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BCE and named because of the pontoon bridge that connected the two banks of the Euphrates river.
ReplyDeleteChiasmus (Latin "crossing" from the Greek "chiázo," to shape like the letter Χ") is an inverted parallelism in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; today the term is broadly applied to any "criss-cross" structure. For example, in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
Apostrophe (Greek for "turning away") is an exclamatory figure of speech that occurs when a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience or reader and directs speech to a third party, often not present, perhaps a personified abstract quality or inanimate object. (Commonly the figure of speech is introduced by the vocative exclamation "O" but that is not necessarily the case.) A famous example would be St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthinians: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"