0:00:14.680,0:00:17.896
When we talk, sometimes[br]we say things directly.

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"I'm going to the store,[br]I'll be back in five minutes."

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Other times though, we talk in a way[br]that conjures up a small scene.

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"It's raining cats and dogs out," we say,

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or "I was waiting[br]for the other shoe to drop."

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Metaphors are a way[br]to talk about one thing

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by describing something else.

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That may seem roundabout, but it's not.

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Seeing and hearing and tasting[br]are how we know anything first.

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The philosopher William James[br]described the world of newborn infants

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as a "buzzing and blooming confusion."

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Abstract ideas are pale things

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compared to those first bees and blossoms.

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Metaphors think[br]with the imagination and the senses.

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The hot chili peppers in them[br]explode in the mouth and the mind.

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They're also precise.

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We don't really stop[br]to think about a raindrop

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the size of an actual cat or dog,

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but as soon as I do,

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I realize that I'm quite certain[br]the dog has to be a small one --

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a cocker spaniel, or a dachshund --

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and not a golden Lab or Newfoundland.

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I think a beagle might be about right.

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A metaphor isn't true or untrue[br]in any ordinary sense.

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Metaphors are art, not science,

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but they can still feel right or wrong.

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A metaphor that isn't good[br]leaves you confused.

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You know what it means[br]to feel like a square wheel,

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but not what it's like[br]to be tired as a whale.

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There's a paradox to metaphors.

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They almost always[br]say things that aren't true.

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If you say, "there's[br]an elephant in the room,"

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there isn't an actual one,

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looking for the peanut dish on the table.

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Metaphors get under your skin[br]by ghosting right past the logical mind.

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Plus, we're used to thinking in images.

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Every night we dream impossible things.

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And when we wake up,[br]that way of thinking's still in us.

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We take off our dream shoes,

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and button ourselves into our lives.

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Some metaphors[br]include the words "like" or "as."

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"Sweet as honey," "strong as a tree."

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Those are called similes.

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A simile is a metaphor[br]that admits it's making a comparison.

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Similes tend to make you think.

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Metaphors let you feel things directly.

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Take Shakespeare's famous metaphor,

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"All the world's a stage."

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"The world is like a stage"[br]just seems thinner, and more boring.

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Metaphors can also live in verbs.

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Emily Dickinson begins a poem,

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"I saw no way --[br]the heavens were stitched --"

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and we know instantly

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what it would feel like[br]if the sky were a fabric sewn shut.

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They can live in adjectives, too.

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"Still waters run deep,"[br]we say of someone quiet and thoughtful.

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And the deep matters[br]as much as the stillness and the water do.

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One of the clearest places[br]to find good metaphors is in poems.

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Take this haiku by the 18th-century[br]Japanese poet Issa.

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"On a branch floating downriver,[br]a cricket singing."

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The first way to meet a metaphor[br]is just to see the world through its eyes:

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an insect sings from a branch[br]passing by in the middle of the river.

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Even as you see that though,

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some part of you recognizes in the image

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a small portrait of what it's like[br]to live in this world of change and time,

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our human fate is to vanish,[br]as surely as that small cricket will,

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and still, we do what it does.

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We live, we sing.

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Sometimes a poem[br]takes a metaphor and extends it,

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building on one idea in many ways.

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Here's the beginning[br]of Langston Hughes' famous poem

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"Mother to Son."

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"Well, son, I'll tell you.

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Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

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It's had tacks in it, and splinters,

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and boards torn up,

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and places with no carpet on the floor."

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Langston Hughes is making[br]a metaphor that compares

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a hard life to a wrecked house[br]you still have to live in.

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Those splinters and tacks feel real,

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they hurt your own feet[br]and your own heart,

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but the mother[br]is describing her life here,

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not her actual house.

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And hunger, and cold,[br]exhausting work and poverty

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are what's also inside those splinters.

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Metaphors aren't always[br]about our human lives and feelings.

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The Chicago poet Carl Sandburg wrote,

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"The fog comes on little cat feet.

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It sits looking over harbor[br]and city on silent haunches,

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and then moves on."

0:04:45.440,0:04:47.736
The comparison here is simple.

0:04:47.760,0:04:49.983
Fog is being described as a cat.

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But a good metaphor isn't a puzzle,

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or a way to convey hidden meanings,

0:04:54.680,0:04:58.280
it's a way to let you feel[br]and know something differently.

0:04:58.920,0:05:01.136
No one who's heard this poem forgets it.

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You see fog,

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and there's a small grey cat nearby.

0:05:05.160,0:05:09.016
Metaphors give words a way[br]to go beyond their own meaning.

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They're handles on the door[br]of what we can know,

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and of what we can imagine.

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Each door leads to some new house,

0:05:16.040,0:05:20.200
and some new world[br]that only that one handle can open.

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What's amazing is this:

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by making a handle,

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you can make a world.