Help find figure of speech in this poem please!!!

Goober nut , Wednesday, 11th of August 2010 08:15:28 PM

l DONT GET HOW TO FIND IT, CAN YOU FIND IT FOR ME OR TELL ME HOW TO

Goober nut

PLEASE!!
l caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the

Registered User

boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of its

Joined: Saturday, 1st of May 2010, 04:18:38

mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He

Posts: 1563

hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.

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Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient
wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:

shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age. />He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and
infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three

rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in

the terrible oxygen
— the frightening gills,
fresh and
crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly —
l thought of the
coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and
the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny
entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
l
looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but
shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with
tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched
isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.

— It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the
light.
l admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,

and then l saw
that from his lower lip
— if you could
call it a lip —
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old
pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel
still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in
his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it,
two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from
the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals
with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of
wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
l stared and stared />and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool
of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted
engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,

the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels — until
everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And l let the fish
go.

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Babe Cakes , Thursday, 12th of August 2010 02:24:11 AM

I am not real good at this, but I will try.

Babe Cakes

Registered User

Similes use ''like'' or ''as'' & describe something in terms of something

Joined: Thursday, 13th of May 2010, 12:03:50

else. In the first one, skin is described LIKE wallpaper.

Posts: 886

Viewed 8487 times

Here & there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper (simile)

pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper (simile)

coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers (flesh described as feathers)

pink swim-bladder
like a big peony (swim-bladder described like a flower)

A metaphor describes something in terms of something else, but doesn't use
LIKE or AS.

He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime, (barnacles are described as fine rosettes -
metaphor)

a five-haired beard of wisdom (the broken fishing lines described as a
beard - metaphor)

where oil had spread a rainbow (describing the sight of oil as a rainbow
- metaphor)

and victory filled up
the little rented boat (describing victory as filling up the boat -
metaphor)

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Help find figure of speech in this poem please!!!

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