In honor of this beautiful season, here is an oldie of mine:
spring . . .
hearing green
and only green
[published Hedgerow #130, Winter 2020]
This haiku has only six words and eight syllables. It’s subject is simple: spring. What does spring mean to you as a reader, a person, perhaps a writer (as many of you are)? I’m sure we could spend hours coming up with wonderful definitions and explanations of what spring is (scientifically) and what it means to us. Spring evokes all sorts of images and memories, does it not?
Synesthesia–a beautiful word to say aloud–is both a neurological condition and a literary term/rhetorical device. A neurologist might encounter patients who might visualize a color when smelling a scent or hearing a certain note or sound when looking at a color. In the haiku (above), I have used synesthesia as a rhetorical device. You may be very familiar with this term and use since it goes back quite a way (Homer used it). Here is a definition from the Poetry Foundation:
Synesthesia in poetry is a literary device that blends different sensory modalities—such as sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste—to create vivid, unconventional imagery. It describes one sensation in terms of another (e.g., “loud colors” or “sweet sound”) to evoke intense emotional or atmospheric responses, often blurring the lines between perception and description.
For some wonderful examples go to their site and read this:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/synesthesia
I hope that this brief excursion into literary devices makes you suddenly aware of just how often synesthesia is used in the books you read or in songs and even in the commercials you see on television.
Remember when you were a child and you were taught about similes. You probably delighted in making up similes left and right. Literary devices expand our thinking and our perception by pushing us a little bit into making new (sometimes strange) connections.
A Poet in Time 