Figurative Language in Poetry: Moving Students from Identification to Analysis

There’s no shortage of similes and metaphors used to describe or convey love in English literature.

Yet the most romantic uses of figurative language in poetry are the surprising comparisons: Shakespeare’s adoration of a woman with hair he compares to black wires, Donne’s description of two souls united like a drawing compass, Elisavietta Ritchie’s hyperbolic (albeit lesser-known) claim that a mountain of unsorted laundry couldn’t replace a lover’s presence.

Who would want to be compared to a clichéd rose in the face of options like these?

When teaching poetry, especially to our PreAP, Honors, and AP students, we absolutely cannot ignore figurative language. Of course, things like structure and imagery matter; so do tone, rhythm, and meter. But figurative language is everywhere, and it’s something that, with a little guidance, our students are capable of analyzing skillfully.

We love presenting our students with an array of surprising comparisons, like our “most romantic” contenders above. Figurative language in poetry is most effective when it catches us off guard, when it forces us to slow down and think about how such a comparison could possibly be appropriate. It’s these moments that delight us and give poetry its richness and power.

In this post, we’re sharing the must-cover terms, key strategies, and go-to poems that made up the heart of our poetry unit when teaching AP Literature—everything you need to move your students from identification to analysis.

Why Figurative Language in Poetry Matters

The idea that figurative language should be central to a poetry unit seems obvious to those of us who choose to study literature, but we also value figurative language for how perfectly it meets our pedagogical goals.

First, figurative language is pervasive in poetry, making it impossible to teach poetry without it. Poetry is nearly impossible to define, but the heavier-than-usual use of figurative language is one of the characteristics that differentiates it from other genres. If you’re teaching poetry, you’re going to encounter figurative language.

Second, figurative language often carries the meaning in a poem, which means teaching students to engage with it appropriately will be worthwhile. Some of poetry’s other defining characteristics—rhyme, meter, sound devices—create subtle effects that can be challenging for students to analyze confidently. But figurative language often points more directly toward a poem’s meaning, making it a reliable starting point for building students’ analytical skills.

Third, students come to us with at least some familiarity with figurative language. This should be the case for nearly everything we teach in high school English—it’s not like students have never discussed plot or character before, learned the parts of speech, or been introduced to the five-paragraph essay. And yet somehow, our students always seem to be starting from scratch when they walk through our doors.

Not so with figurative language. Even our most struggling students can rattle off, “a simile is a comparison that uses like or as” without any additional instruction from us.

This is great news because it means that instead of reteaching, we can actually build on our students’ basic knowledge. We can examine surprising examples, introduce more complex terms (or even the idea that a simile can use the word “resembles” instead of “like” or “as”), and move beyond merely identifying terms to actually analyzing them.

Finally, as we move toward analysis, figurative language is the perfect subject matter for the claim—evidence—commentary pattern we teach our students. Figurative language begs to be unpacked—students need to explain what is being compared and why, so they actually have something to write about in their commentary. And since figurative language actually carries meaning, our students can connect it to a claim or even a theme with less trouble than usual.

So, what counts as figurative language? In addition to symbolism and irony, which we cover separately with our students, there are eight key terms that your students should know.

Figurative Language in Poetry: 8 Must-Cover Terms

1. Side note: Sometimes, metonymy (something closely related is substituted for the thing actually meant, like in the White House example above) is differentiated from synecdoche (when a person or object is referred to by one of its parts, like calling someone a “redhead” or asking if someone can “give us a hand”). But our textbook noted that the two terms are often used interchangeably, and referring to them both as “metonymy” was much easier for our students. ↩︎

Now that we’ve reviewed what to teach, let’s talk about strategies to help you teach it effectively.

4 Useful Strategies When Teaching Figurative Language in Poetry

Build on the Basics

Even though students are likely familiar with many of the must-cover terms, we still like to start with a quick review and have students practice identifying examples.

Not only does this ensure everyone is on the same page, but it also helps clear up any misunderstandings. One of the examples we gave students each year was this quote from Francis Thompson: “The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.” Students often misidentified the quotation as personification, so it was helpful to remind them that the comparison must be to a person, not just a living thing. Since the desert is being compared to some kind of big cat—perhaps a lion—it’s a metaphor.

You can also use this review as an opportunity to build on what students know as you introduce new terms. The AP Literature and Composition Course & Exam Description includes extended similes and metaphors as well as conceits, “a form of extended metaphor that often appears in poetry [and develops] complex comparisons that present images, concepts, and associations in surprising or paradoxical ways.”

Make It Concrete

If you have students who are struggling to interpret figurative language in poetry, encourage them to make it visual. Whether students actually draw out the comparison or create a Venn Diagram to represent how the two things are similar, this approach can make the meaning click.

We spent many years trying to use dry-erase markers to show students what a drawing compass looks like when discussing the final stanzas of John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” an exercise always accompanied by a few “aha” moments.

Ask “Why”

As you begin to help students move beyond identification and toward analysis, ask them why the author might have chosen to compare these two things. By pointing students toward what those elements have in common, they begin to notice the effect of the comparison, and you have a starting place for discussion.

Provide Opportunities for Independent Practice

This is a great place to remove some scaffolding and allow students to take on more of the heavy lifting, perhaps with a group activity; it’s also a great place to practice writing literary analysis paragraphs. Because students are relatively comfortable with figurative language, they’re more open to independence.

We created several 5C paragraph assignments in which we asked students to identify a poem’s purpose, select a piece of textual evidence that supports it, and then identify the literary device used in that piece of evidence. (You might, for this particular activity, tell them their evidence must include some type of figurative language.) Then, students wrote a 5C paragraph connecting the literary device to the purpose.

Bonus: Reinforce with Shakespeare

If your students need more practice than your poetry unit allows for, continue to practice analyzing figurative language in a novel/play unit by assigning one of Shakespeare’s plays. We taught Macbeth in the middle of our poetry unit, and our students completed close reading activities on key soliloquies (essentially, poetry analysis). Figurative language appears frequently in Shakespeare’s verse, so it’s an opportunity to reinforce this skill while still having the discussions about complex characterization and theme that can only come from longer texts.

11 Poem Recommendations for Teaching Figurative Language

These eleven poems made frequent appearances in our AP Literature curriculum—they were some of our students’ favorites.

“Bright Star,” John Keats

Keats’s sonnet is a great example of apostrophe: the speaker directly addresses a star, wishing he could be like the star and reflecting on what he would gain and lose in that position. In traditional Keats fashion, the speaker longs for the unchanging nature of the star while lamenting the participation in life that he would lose without change and the passage of time.

“Incident,” Countee Cullen

Cullen’s simple poem about the speaker’s childhood experience of hearing a racial slur in response to a friendly gesture makes powerful use of understatement. Cullen captures the pain and significance of that moment by referring to it as only a mere incident.

“Metaphors,” Sylvia Plath

Plath’s poem—obviously, full of metaphors—is a fun little puzzle for students to solve if you can get them to do so without turning to their friends Google and ChatGPT. Plath presents a series of metaphors that all reflect the state of pregnancy; the realization that the first line—”I’m a riddle in nine syllables”—describes the poem itself (each line has nine syllables) is a fun discovery.

“Mind,” Richard Wilbur

“The mind is like a bat.” Not a comparison we would traditionally make, but after listening to Wilbur’s speaker reflect upon the aptness of the simile, we have to say that he makes a good case for it. The poem doesn’t take long to discuss but is an excellent example of extended simile.

“My Number,” Billy Collins

Students tend to enjoy Collins’s poetry, as it’s often humorous, and “My Number” is no exception. The personification of Death as someone the speaker might outsmart with witty conversation is humorous, but the poem also offers opportunities to reflect on how, even in humor, we attempt to distance ourselves from death’s inevitability.

“Promises Like Pie Crust,” Christina Rossetti

The comparison of promises to pie crusts, so easily broken, is so good. Rossetti’s speaker uses the comparison to convince a potential romantic partner not to make promises that might one day be broken, painting a melancholy view of relationships that makes us sad for the speaker but that we can also relate to.

“Song of the Powers,” David Mason

Mason’s personification of rock, paper, and scissors transforms a childhood game from something silly to a reflection on the destructive nature of power, a rather chilling effect.

“Sorting Laundry,” Elisavietta Ritchie

To Ritchie’s speaker, the act of sorting laundry is an act of love, one that encapsulates the memories that she and her partner hold dear. By the end of the poem, her use of hyperbole, claiming that “a mountain of unsorted wash / could not fill / the empty side of the bed” if her lover were to leave her makes perfect sense.

“The Sun Rising,” John Donne

We love ourselves a good John Donne poem, and these three stanzas are packed full of figurative language. The speaker directs the entire poem at the sun, first chiding it for interrupting a peaceful morning between lovers, then hyperbolically proclaiming the lovers’ connection to be stronger than the sun’s beams itself, and finally requesting that the sun warm him and his lover since they, not the sun, are the center of the universe. There’s a lot for students to unpack, but the poem itself is a light and fun declaration of love.

“To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell

Less light and fun (but equally engaging to a room full of high school seniors) is Andrew Marvell’s poem, in which the speaker attempts to convince a young woman that life is too short to preserve her virginity. Figurative language features heavily throughout the poem, and while it’s fun to work out the speaker’s argument, the poem gains power when we realize that Marvell is using sex as a metaphor for fully embracing life’s pleasures. Life is short, and we must make the most of it (though there are, perhaps, better options than giving in to this young lover’s desires).

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” John Donne

Donne’s deeply romantic poem (made more so by the background information that he wrote it for his wife, who felt anxious when he traveled) compares the pair of them to the two legs of a drawing compass: bound together at the soul level so that, even if one leg must travel, they remain connected and the traveling leg will always return. The poem is an excellent example of a conceit with multiple uses of figurative language to unpack, and at least a few students react with a romantic sigh after finally working through the complex language.

Teaching figurative language in poetry is a particularly rewarding endeavor, in our experience. It’s not something we can skip, given the prevalence of figurative language in poetry, but we wouldn’t want to—it’s a lesson that our students eagerly engaged with and led to tangible progress in developing their literary analysis skills. We always want to help our students move beyond identification to analysis; figurative language offers the perfect opportunity to do just that.

If you’re looking to incorporate some of the resources we’ve mentioned today into your poetry unit, you might find these three particularly helpful: our literary terms list, our 5C paragraph structure mini-lesson (which comes with a character analysis prompt that could easily be modified to help students practice discussing figurative language), and our mini-unit on how to write a literary analysis essay (which includes examples of figurative language).