In the chapter Rhetoric, poetics, and poetry, Poetry is closely associated to rhetoric, the consider of the persuasive and expressive resources of language. Culler points to characterize both poetry and rhetoric, citing both their contrasts and the ways in which they are associated. He specified that rhetoric being the art of persuasion and poetry being the art of imitation. He goes on to the list of couple rhetorical figures such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. These are the most basic structures by which we make sense of experience. Poetry as Culler characterizes can be seen in numerous distinctive ways such as either a structure (the real words on a page implied to be studied) or an occasion (the act of the writer or the experience of the reader). Culler implies to treat poem on a different level than other shapes of rhetoric. I think in the poem “The sea is history” by Derek Walcott, I found metaphor as a main rhetoric technique and this is the interesting for me. In the middle line of poem, Walcott says that sad and mournful songs could be heard from the seabed and the mournful songs have been sung by the slave women. The poet answers himself that the history is hidden in the sea sands where the bodies of African slaves reside now. African slaves must have commitment towards the journey for history and as it were at that point the poet will offer assistance them to find it. This is why this poem can be visual metaphor for the societies and battles that have shaped as a result of slavery.

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