Simile

"More Than Enough"

By: Marge Piercy

(poem from poetryfoundation.org)

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.

All over the sand road where we walk

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense

the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy

clumps of flower and the blackberries

are blooming in the thickets. Season of

joy for the bee. The green will never

again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads

into the wind. Rich fresh wine

of June, we stagger into you smeared

with pollen, overcome as the turtle

laying her eggs in roadside sand.

Biographical Information

          Poet, novelist, and essayist Marge Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1936. She won a scholarship to the University of Michigan and was the first member of her family to attend college. She subsequently earned a master's degree from Northwestern University.

       She has published fifteen books of poetry, including Colors Passing Through Us (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (1999), Early Grrrl: The Early Poems of Marge Piercy (1999), What Are Big Girls Made Of? (1997), Mars and Her Children (1992), Available Light (1988), Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (1982), and The Moon Is Always Female (1980). She is also the author of a collection of essays on poetry, Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt (1982). The most recent of Piercy's fifteen novels are Three Women (1999), Storm Tide (with Ira Wood, 1998), City of Darkness, City of Light (1996), The Longings of Women (1994), and He, She and It (1991; published in England as Body of Glass, 1992).

        Piercy is dedicated to exploring the interstices of ideology and aesthetics by way of Marxist, feminist, and environmentalist strains of thought. "To name," she writes, "is not to possess what cannot / be owned or even known in the small words / and endless excuses of human speech." 

(biographical information from poets.org)

Explanation of Technique

        In simile poems, two things are being compared to. The comparison usually includes, "like", or, "as". This is called a direct comparison. Similes can help the reader comprehend the poem easier. The simile in Marge Piercy's poem is when she compares all of the different colors of flowers and trees to a colored mist.

Interpretation of Poem

       This poem talks about how fascinating the month of June can be with all of the flowers, trees, and other things. The message Marge Piercy is trying to tell the reader is that the world is not always dreadful. Some things in the world can just be absolutely marvelous.

(picture from dangerouscreation.com)

Visual Explanation

            In the poem, all of the different colored flowers and trees were compared to a colored mist. So, to represent this comparison in the poem I chose a beautiful picture of a variety of colored flowers and some trees. Also, the mountain in the background adds to the beauty in this picture.