The Use of Metaphor

Some poets use metaphors in their poems to help them in clarifying images they drew in the lines, or describe the ideas which they want the reader to understand and make it easier to observe by relating the idea to something that a reader can imagine or know.

In fact, Audre Lorde used metaphor in her poem “Coal” to relate her ideas and images to some physical objects to make it easier for the reader to understand. She named her poem with “Coal” which implies black color to show the reader how she was proud to be black and specially in the Black Arts Movement period, which was a period that blacks tried to form a self identity and came over the slavery period they lived before. Moreover, she had chosen the coal in particular as a material that has the darkest black color possible to help her describe that state of an extreme proud of her color. Hence, this metaphor can be seen clearly by relating the coal to “"I am black because I came from the earth's insides.”

Accordingly, Lorde used the diamond as another physical object to describe and clarify her ideas about the words spoken by humans and how they can be shaped in a good or bad way. This can bee seen when she said “Some words are open like a diamond“. Furthermore, she kept on using metaphor to describe the words by relating them to the breeding of adders when she said “Some words live in my throat breeding like adders”, which implied the ability to hold dangerous things to say even though it is hard to hold. Accordingly, the words were related to other things in Lorde’s poem, when she compared them to gypsies when se said “Other know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue”, wagers when she said “Then there are words like stapled wagers in a perforated book”, and sparrows “explode through my lips like young sparrows bursting from shell”.

In conclusion, Lorde’s poem satisfies the idea of “Poem is a metaphor”. She went through her ideas and pictures in her poem and related them to physical object, colors, human kinds, and snakes. Hence, the use of metaphor might make the poem more clear to readers to understand how the poet felt and wanted to say.