Question

Hi! I’m needing help, I need to figure out what figurative language is within this poem and some examples of it (along with the lines it’s found in) if anyone can help I’d appreciate it!

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P U M P K I N F A R M , H A L F M O O N B AY
Now you veer away from me like a sailor on his keel
into a windless place, into gold corn blades coiling
in the dry light-and-shade of furrows run over everywhere
with vines, brown curls rasping like metal files
against the cotton weave of your sweatshirt.
You enter the rows shoulder first, sideways.
A note I make of your character: that instinct
to minimize destruction, whistling the scalpel’s
shining lyric all the way into a dark veiny passage,
stitching the wound to stop the pain.
Meanwhile a crowd of schoolchildren out of school
managed only loosely by their teachers
are bruising the natural world, their voices
high-pitched confusions of sea birds. Clumps
of little boys and girls climbing blocks of hay,
piles of pumpkins, the big green tractor.
They are everywhere, a scramble of jostlings
and tumblings, the flinging of arms as they jump,
the pumping of fists into shoulders. I know
the changing expressions of the faces
and what is likely to happen next: boys lift
pumpkins the size of basketballs over their heads,
trying to smash them, wanting to see them explode.
You turn back to say something I’m too far away to hear.
The trouble with me is I worry too much about intrusion,
and imagine too purely someone else’s passions
and get them wrong. Some days everything seems
pointless. What moves any of us to do what we do?
I go around the field of corn on a rutted
tractor road, pushing a barrow of pumpkins to the car.
And you? Whatever you’ve said is over.
You’re seeing between the rows the same unruly
mess of tissues, organs, shapes
such as those you’ve learned to cut into,
cutting like Aeneas through waves blown red and black
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by a cold wind, one city or another at his back
burning, and nothing in the way of his future.
In the offing there is nothing but blue, water and sky—
the straight, the narrow, the exact.
In your mind you’re rehearsing some procedure—
the yards, the riggings, the sutures yare in your hands.
This, like this. Yes, yes. This. You’re seeing
what in the body is in the way, occlusions and clamps
and the new sealing knife that burns the bleeders shut

Answer 1

Answer: The poem contains several examples of figurative language, including:

Simile - a comparison of two things using "like" or "as"

Example: "Now you veer away from me like a sailor on his keel"

Metaphor - a comparison of two things without using "like" or "as"

Example: "gold corn blades coiling in the dry light-and-shade of furrows"

Personification - giving human qualities to non-human things

Example: "brown curls rasping like metal files against the cotton weave of your sweatshirt"

Imagery - using descriptive language to create a vivid mental picture

Example: "high-pitched confusions of sea birds," "flinging of arms as they jump," and "a scramble of jostlings and tumblings."

Allusion - a reference to a well-known person, place, or event in history or literature

Example: "cutting like Aeneas through waves blown red and black by a cold wind, one city or another at his back burning, and nothing in the way of his future." This is a reference to the hero Aeneas from the epic poem "The Aeneid" by Virgil.

Hyperbole - an exaggeration for emphasis

Example: "pumpkins the size of basketballs."

These are just a few examples of the figurative language used in the poem.

Step-by-step explanation: