ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Not all poems are created equal. [Girl reciting poem on stage]

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Just because something might happen to rhyme doesn't make it exciting or meaningful.

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For example, what if we showed you this poem.

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“The sky is blue, the ocean is too.”

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Didn't exactly make you jump out of your seat or start weeping uncontrollably, did it? [Man on beach with burnt skin]

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That's because it hasn't used any adjectives or metaphors yet.

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Adjectives and metaphors can be used to give imagery and meaning to a poem. [Coop discussing adjectives and metaphors]

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But before we get into all that, let's make sure we know what these things are,

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starting with “adjectives.” [Man running down a road]

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An adjective is simply a “describing” word. It's a word you usually put before another

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word in order to provide extra details about it.

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If we were to simply write the word “cat,” then you might ask, “What kind of cat?”

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Is it a “fluffy cat?” [Cat on the side of a road]

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An “angry cat?”

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A… “grumpy cat?”

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For our little poem, we can add a couple adjectives to the first line to make it have way more

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meaning, like this: [Adjectives added to poem]

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The endless sky is a brilliant blue.

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See how much better that sounds? Really paints a picture, doesn’t it?

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Then there are “metaphors,” which are figures of speech that identify something [Dino explaining metaphors]

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as being the same as, or similar to, something else.

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Suppose we wanted to say that our dog is smart.

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Sure, we could use an adjective and say the “smart dog.” [Dog lying on the sofa]

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But if we wanted to use a metaphor instead, we could say, “The dog is a walking encyclopedia.”

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Of course we know that the dog isn't actually a walking encyclopedia, but as a metaphor, [Dog transforms into an encyclopedia]

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it tells us that the dog is smart and knows a lot…

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…because we know that encyclopedias hold lots of information.

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Although, no matter how smart this dog is, its head is probably more full of stupid pet [Dog with a bone on its head]

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tricks than, say, expertise in the field of quantum mechanics.

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So now let's try and use a metaphor to improve the second line of our short little poem about nature.

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Instead of just saying that the ocean is blue, like the sky…maybe we could try to explain

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how amazing and magical it is. To do that, we need to think of something totally unrelated [Magician explodes and disappears]

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and also amazing and magical.

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Like a shooting star!

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So instead of saying “and the ocean is too,” let's use a metaphor and change it up...

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When all’s said and done, we took our boring old little poem that went, [Coop discussing the old poem]

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“The sky is blue, the ocean is too.”

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And turned it into,

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“The endless sky is a brilliant blue, The ocean is a shooting star, to make your

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wish come true.”

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All from using a few adjectives and a metaphor.

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Probably not going to win any major awards, but…definitely better. [Dog on stage with new poem]

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