is a figure of speech whereby animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate objects are endowed
with human traits or abilities.
“The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,
Its bag limp as a stopped lung”
—Howard Nemerov, from “The Vacuum”
“From the Miracle Mile, whole freeways away,
a brilliant fluorescence breaks out
and makes war with the dim squares
of yellow kitchen light winking on
in all the side streets of the Barrio.”
—Garrett Hongo, from “Yellow Light”
“I could hear the wilderness listen”
—William Stafford, from “Traveling through the Dark”
“heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes”
—H.D., from “Heat”
“I’ll cut off the arms of ivy
reaching toward the river.”
—Shelley Wagner, from “Thirteenth Birthday”
“under the hood purred the steady engine”
—William Stafford, from “Traveling through the Dark”
“It smiles to see me
Still in my bathrobe.
It sits in my lap
And will not let me rise.
Now it is kissing my eyes.
Arms enfold me, arms
Pale with a thick down.”
—Donald Justice, from “Lethargy”
“senility
takes the brain in its soft retriever's mouth
and carries it to be gutted”
—Sarah Lindsay, from “Aluminum Chlorohydrate”
“the cove testing its breath
against the autumn morning”
—Cheryl Savageau, from “Bones—A City Poem”
“Then dusk would come, and shadows stepped from behind the trees
and started uphill, and it seemed the cave would breathe a little cold
back into the darkening valley”
—Ted Kooser, from “Ice Cave”
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