Idiom + Simile = Poetry

Blogger:  Etta Wilson

Location: Books & Such, Nashville Office

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One culture I’ve overlooked in thinking about idiom and simile is the Native American. Sharon Creech’s 1995 Newbery Medal winner, Walk Two Moons, is built on the Native America use of idiom and simile. The six mysterious messages left for 13-year-old Sal throughout the book are almost all idiomatic: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked two moon in his moccasins;” “We never know the worth of water until the well runs dry;” and my favorite, “You can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.” Interpreted through the events that happen to Sal, upper middle-grade readers can certainly understand these idioms even if they don’t know that’s what they’re reading.

I think the most accessible route to appreciating idiom and simile for any of us, and especially for children, may be through poetry. So much of poetry is full of comparisons or writing about something as though it is like something else. The lines of Robert Louis Stevenson come to mind: “My bed is like a little boat; Nurse helps me in when I embark . . .”  and the last verse of Lillian Morrison’s poem “Rain and Snow” which starts: “The snow comes down like feathers drifting through the sky. . .”. Lots of book titles have this symbolic quality. It’s this beauty of language, the scrumptious taste of words stirring in the pots of our minds, that enlarges our consciousness and makes us start thinking, speaking and writing beyond our ordinary ways.

You may not be writing for children and you may not think of yourself as a poet, but the possibilities of idiom and simile should always be in our bag of tricks as  writers.

By Etta Wilson on Oct 27, 2009 in Blog, Children's books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Writing Life | 1 Comment