After reading and analyzing Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Writer,” consider your experiences as a writer—the frustrations and the satisfactions you felt as you shaped words into meaning.
For this assignment, choose a metaphor that will tell others about you as a writer. You will build an extended metaphor, just as Wilbur has in his poem. Your goal is to show others what you are like as a writer.
Tips
• The metaphor you choose can take the form of an animal (e.g., an elephant, a fox, an ostrich), a machine (e.g., a bulldozer, a tank, a computer), or something else. Any metaphor you choose will be correct if you support your assertion.
• Your definition of yourself as a writer is crucial to your metaphor: Are you thinking of yourself as a paper writer, a letter writer, or something else? If your definition is not implied in the metaphor, you need to define it early in your project.
• Remember to provide detailed support for your metaphor. Think about specific characteristics of yourself as a writer that compare to the item you have chosen for your metaphor.