In Jonathan Culler’s Chapter “Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry” The two figures that really stand out to me was metaphor and metonymy. He states “Metaphor is thus a version of a basic way of knowing: We know something by seeing it as something” I think most people are familiar with what a metaphor is because its not only in poems but its in everyday life . In everyday life we use a metaphor to understand and see things better. In the other hand Culler also states ” Metonymy produces order by linking things in spatial and temporal series, moving from one thing to another within a given domain” This basically is a figure of speech where one thing along with another is associated. In the poem “Diving into the Wreck” By Adrienne Rich one place i identified a poetic technique is when she says “And i am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body” In this sentence i was able to identify both metonymy and a metaphor. Identified metonymy because as she states a mermaid she then states hair and when she states a merman she then states his armored body, when you think about it those things are associated with each other because when you think of a mermaid you think of long hair and when you think of a merman you think about a man’s body strength. I also believe that the author is using a metaphor because as she is progressing in the poem she then becomes a male and a female. Here we are seeing a diver become something more than when the poem started. This technique is important to me because i was able to understand the poem more. It helped shaped the meaning of the poem more because i was able to understand growth which is what i think the poem is about.

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