on weak similes
& round-up
Happy Monday, folks.
Here’s what I have for you today:
Housekeeping
What I’m reading
Quotations
On weak similes
Tweets
Housekeeping:
I’m selling 10 zines for $30. Whoop whoop!
What I’m reading:
Dear Memory, Victoria Chang
Quotations:
The missing link between the compelling social science studies on the contagion of violence and the model of such contagion as an infectious disease is a biologically grounded mechanism. A recent neuroscience discovery, a type of brain cell called mirror neuron, may provide such a missing link.
-Marco Iacoboni, “The Potential Role of Mirror Neurons in the Contagion of Violence”
I am trying to make birds out of silence.
-Victoria Chang
Perhaps there’s no truth. Just memory and words.
-Victoria Chang
How we perpetuate our own stereotypes, our own vanishing.
-Victoria Chang
Harm is rarely about intention.
-Victoria Chang
You were from another city. I didn’t know there were other cities until you came.
-Victoria Chang
My dreams are still filled with earthquakes.
-Victoria Chang
Shame never has a loud clang. The worst part of shame is how silent it is.
-Victoria Chang
For me, writing felt like an act of identity-making. Each word, a clavicle, a femur, each sentence, an organ.
-Victoria Chang
On weak similes:
As some of you may recall, my first newsletter was about the art of the simile. In it, I catalogued a number of similes I’ve read & liked enough to jot down.
As you know, similes are a form of figurative language wherein a writer can say something is like something else. Similes can be strong, and surprising, and palpable—but they can also be weak & cloudy.
Here are a few similes that I deem “weak,” not operating as we hope one will. These similes aren’t illustrative, or they don’t compare two unlike things.
First:
Frost rests like silt in the morning.
-Benjamin Kaja
What makes this simile weak?
Again, similes are strong when they make a sort of surprising comparison. “The raspberries glowed like strawberries,” for instance, is weak—because raspberries and strawberries already have so much in common. The same is true of “frost” and “silt”—both are natural, both can rest on the surfaces of things so…this really doesn’t feel like much of a revelation.
Google defines a simile, first and foremost, as:
a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind.
Second:
my grief, like a migraine, / strangling my hope.
-Fariha Róisín
What makes this simile weak?
This simile is weak because it doesn’t exactly make sense. Reordered, this nonsensicalness becomes clear:
my grief strangles my hope like a migraine.
In other words, grief is operating like a migraine, because both strangle hope. But, in fact, I don’t think it’s a ~~known understanding~~ that “migraines strangle hope.” Migraines are painful, sure, but I don’t usually associate them with hope or the lack thereof. In turn, this simile—though certainly catchy in its rhythm & diction—doesn’t actually communicate any meaning.
Third:
Perspective creeps, like wisdom, but can feel sudden.
-Victoria Chang
What makes this simile weak?
Like the first example, this simile compares two like things—rather than two unlike things—and thus doesn’t operate the way similes are intended to. What I mean is: “perspective” and “wisdom” often go hand-in-hand—or at the very least often coexist—so there’s no sense of surprise to this simile. Again, a simile is “a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind.”
There’s also the fact that this simile is purely made up of abstractions. Perspective. Wisdom. Suddenness.
Here is Google’s definition of a simile in full:
a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.
In this example, the simile is in no way “emphatic” or “vivid.” Rather, it’s abstract, overdetermined. Thus: a weak simile.
If you have any interest in seeing strong similes,
Tweets:
That’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you have a great week.
-Despy Boutris