As a fan of Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Ted Kooser, I couldn’t wait to see what he would say about using metaphors in this little-known book for people who want to start writing. He writes, “. . . an apt metaphor opens a door out of a box, gives you a way to express something difficult, a tool to convert something physical and visible into language that is abstract and portable . . . ” The most effective writing, he says, “seems to reach through the opaque surface of the world and offer a glimpse of that universal order beyond.”
Ted Kooser & Steve Cox, Writing Brave & Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 104.