Poet Alison Chisholm guides you through the language of poetry
A METAPHOR is a powerful device of poetry that expresses one thing as though it were another, such as the political – but not literal – iron curtain, the more poetic the mask of night which Juliet uses to indicate darkness, or the expression her hair was spun gold. The literal part of a metaphor may be referred to as the tenor, and the figurative comparison as the vehicle. So in the last example, hair would be the tenor and spun gold the vehicle.