Metonymy

This is another short essay I wrote for the poetry class.  I know I use many of these poetic devices the teacher is teaching us about, though I did not always know what they were called.  This essay is about the use of metonymy.  I hope you enjoy the essay.

Metonymy

Metonymy is a poetic figure of speech where one word that closely relates to another word is used in order to describe a subject.  Using this technique, poets can add poetic description to their poem and give the poem a more lyrical sound. 

One example of metonymy can be found in Beowulf:

Their ocean-keel boarding,
they drove through the deep, and Daneland left.
A sea-cloth was set, a sail with ropes,
firm to the mast; the flood-timbers moaned;
nor did wind over billows that wave-swimmer blow
across from her course.

In this example, ocean-keel and wave-swimmer both refer to the ship they were sailing.  Wave-swimmer is more descriptive and gives you an image in your mind’s eye of what the ship is doing.  It is more visual and descriptive than just saying “the ship.”

Another metonymy can be found in Robert Frost’s poem Out, Out.

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. 

The “life from spilling” refers to the blood.  The poem is about a boy who is using a wood cutter and has his hand cut off and then dies from the injury.  It is the blood that is actually spilling from his body.  However, you need blood to live, and therefore, the life in a sense was also spilling out.  It adds to the urgency of the poem and brings the emotions to a head.  To say someone is bleeding might cause you to be concerned.  But change that to say someone’s life if flowing out of them, that takes it to a more urgent and fearful level. 

Poets write poems in order to describe an ordinary event or item in a new and extraordinary way, evoking emotions and using strong visual language.  By using the poetic device of metonymy, substituting one word for another that is closely related to the first, a poet can often bring their poem to a higher level of descriptive and emotionality.  

Robert Frost