Keep It on the Body

I had a teacher who would say, “Keep it on the body.” For him that meant every sensation should stay tied to the corporeal experience, but also, at the sentence level, every metaphor, every simile should do so as well. This makes so much sense to me. Why compare something rust-colored to a brick when you could compare it to a spleen? Why put a plane in the sky when you could put a floater on the back of somebody’s eyeball? Doing it that way builds bodies and worlds simultaneously.

KIMBERLY KING PARSONS