Against the Metaphor (Part II): Tradition Didn’t Require It

A brief return to the line, and what it once held—without glitter.

There’s a modern assumption—quiet, but persistent—that metaphor is what makes a poem a poem. That a line must shimmer, transform, or surprise with symbolic torque or it’s just well-shaped prose. But this expectation is not a rule. It’s a fashion. And historically, it’s a recent one. In earlier traditions—especially in English poetry from the Renaissance onward—many of the greatest poems contain little or no metaphor at all. They rely on structure, progression, clarity, and moral or intellectual tension. Take Shakespeare’s sonnets. While some do employ metaphor briefly or ornamentally, many—like Sonnet 44—are conceptual. Philosophical. Declarative. They ask: What if I were made of thought instead of flesh? What if distance is not physical, but mental? The power of those sonnets lies not in their imagery, but in the shape of their argument. They are built with logic, not dazzle. A poem, traditionally, was not required to dance. It was allowed to speak. It was allowed to ask something clearly. Even emotionally. Without ornament. Without performance. We’ve drifted from that. And in drifting, we’ve left the reader with a strange requirement: Be clever, or be nothing. I don’t follow that. I return to the line. Not as decoration. But as structure. As truth shaped through rhythm and restraint. Metaphor has its place. But it is not the spine. At best, it’s the accent. At worst, it’s the distraction. The deeper voice is found in form.