A simile, as our fourth-grade English teachers intoned, is a
comparison of two, usually dissimilar, objects, with the use of
“like” or “as.” To enliven our writing, similes can evoke the
particular sense we want to transmit. Many of our most now-trite
similes were fresh when first used—Burns’ “my love is like a
red, red rose,” Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day?” But repetition and endless assignment in freshman
English classes has made them as shopworn as the bargain table
after a sale. It’s easy to succumb to overused and by now boring
similes. You know the ones: eyes like stars, fits like a glove,
swim (or smoke) like a fish, fierce as a lion, dead as a
doornail, sleep like a log, dry as dust, smooth as silk, white
as snow, cute as a button. When we write, they seem to spring up
like spring flowers, I mean, like groupies at a rock star’s
world tour. I’m not against similes, although they’re less
elegant than their more subtle, no-like/as cousins, the
metaphors (her eyes were stars, he wa