Outer Reaches of Metaphor

Black Box Poetry

This episode was recorded before we recorded episode 12, but we recommend listening to that episode on METAPHOR before listening to this episode on the OUTER REACHES OF METAPHOR. In this episode that might be our most off-the-rails one yet, we talk about how sunflowers can look like almost anything in Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra"; how metaphors are era-specific and typewriter erasers live on past obsolescence because of Elizabeth Bishop's "12 O'Clock News"; and how the hyper-specific metaphorical way in which lips like copper wires is super sexy in Jean Toomer's "Her Lips are Copper Wire." LINKS TO POEMS: (Ginsberg: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49304/sunflower-sutra) (Bishop: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/03/24/12-oclock-news) (Toomer: https://poets.org/poem/her-lips-are-copper-wire)