How to Identify Figurative Language in a Poem
Quick answer: How to identify figurative language in a poem: find statements that are not literally true, then name the figure, metaphor, simile, or personification.
To identify figurative language in a poem, look for statements that are not literally true, a heart cannot really be a drum, fog does not really creep on cat feet, and then name the figure being used: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, metonymy, or symbol. The literal impossibility is your signal that language has shifted into comparison.
Naming the device is the easy half. The half that earns marks and makes you a better reader is stating what the figure does: what the comparison lets you see, feel, or understand that literal statement could not.
The main figures and how to tell them apart
Simile compares openly with 'like' or 'as': my love is like a red, red rose. Metaphor asserts the identity outright: hope is the thing with feathers. Personification gives human behaviour to the nonhuman: the wind worried the shutters. Hyperbole exaggerates for effect: rivers of tears. Metonymy substitutes an associated thing for the thing itself: the crown for the monarchy. Symbol is the long distance figure: an object that accumulates meaning beyond itself across the poem, like Blake's sick rose.
The similes announce themselves; metaphors take slightly more alertness, because they often hide in verbs and adjectives. 'The moon climbed the sky' contains a metaphor: climbing is a body's action. Poets smuggle more figuration through verbs than through grand declarations.
A method for finding them
Read the poem line by line asking one question: is this literally possible? Each 'no' marks a figure. Then examine the verbs, where hidden metaphors live, and the adjectives borrowed from the wrong sense, like a 'loud shirt' or a 'bitter wind', which are small metaphors called synaesthetic or transferred epithets. Finally, check repeated images; repetition is how an ordinary image becomes a symbol.
A worked micro example, original lines: 'Grief moved in without asking, / unpacked its boxes in every room, / and now it pays no rent.' Test: can grief move in, unpack, owe rent? No, so this is figuration, specifically an extended personification of grief as an unwanted lodger. Effect: grief becomes domestic, permanent, and absurdly ordinary, which is precisely how long term mourning feels.
From spotting to analysing
In an essay, the formula 'device, quotation, effect' keeps you honest: name the figure, quote the words, then explain the work it does. Push past the generic effect ('creates imagery') to the specific one: what exactly does comparing grief to a lodger say that 'I was very sad for a long time' does not? The gap between those two sentences is the entire reason figurative language exists.
Be alert, too, for poems that resist figuration. Some contemporary poetry stays deliberately literal, and flatness can be a chosen effect. Absence of figures, in a form famous for them, is itself worth a sentence.
What poets can take from this
- Flag every statement that is literally impossible; each one is a figure.
- Check the verbs; metaphors hide there more often than in nouns.
- Distinguish simile from metaphor by the presence of like or as.
- Track repeated images across the poem; repetition builds symbols.
- Always pair the device's name with its specific effect in this poem.
- Note when a poem avoids figuration entirely; plainness is a choice too.
Try it yourself
Personify an abstract feeling, envy, relief, homesickness, as a houseguest in a 12 line poem, and let its habits around the house reveal everything about how the feeling behaves.
Questions
What is the difference between figurative language and imagery?
Imagery is any language that appeals to the senses and can be entirely literal; figurative language makes non literal comparisons. 'The wet street shone' is imagery; 'the street was a mirror' is a metaphor.
What is the most common figurative language in poetry?
Metaphor, by a distance, followed by simile and personification. Metaphor dominates because it works invisibly inside verbs and adjectives as well as in open comparisons.
How do I explain the effect of a metaphor?
Say what the two things share and what the borrowed qualities make the reader feel or see. Then say what would be lost if the line were literal; that difference is the effect.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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