for Wordsworth's lonely cloud or Eliot's etherized patient or Hughes's raisin in the sun or Shakespeare's summer's day. My favorite simile in all of poetry is Wilbur's "Like a drunken fingerprint across the sky!"Effective similes always move in two diverging directions, helping us to see an object more clearly via a vivid comparison while at the same time distracting us by the very vividness of the other thing we're invited to imagine. This happens all the time with Homer's looping similes of bees and sheep, which take us far, far away from the killing fields of Troy and, then, drop us back, refreshed, for more horror and murderous mayhem.
from The New Republic: A Birthday Card for Richard Wilbur
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