A-2 English Name:____________________________

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

Poetic Language in Prose

One of the things that makes the vignettes in Mango Street so effective is their use of poetic language. Sandra Cisneros is a poet, and it shows even when she writes prose:

Ø A dog runs down the street “with the limbs flopping all over the place like untied shoes.”

Ø Earl’s dogs don’t walk like ordinary dogs; they “leap and somersault like an apostrophe and comma.”

Ø Aunt Lupe’s sick room has a “yellow smell.”

Ø Hips suddenly “bloom like roses” and are “ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition.”

Ø Esperanza thinks diseases are random, that “diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.”

Ø Esperanza and Nenny don’t have “the shy ice cream bells’ giggle” of their friends; their laughter is “all of a sudden and surprised like a pile of dishes breaking.”

Ø Her name, Esperanza, is “like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing…At school they say my name is funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth.”

Ø The house on Mango Street has windows “so small you’d think they were holding their breath,” and sits on the street “with its feet tucked under like a cat.”

Ø Esperanza dreams of a house “quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.”

Ø In the hot days of August, the wind blows “thin as a spider web and barely noticed.”

Ø Esperanza cries with her “eyes closed like tight stars” and “everything inside hiccupped.”

Ø Beautiful Sally “flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over her shoulder and laughs.”

Ø The older women, in the dance hall down the street, “throw their green eyes like dice.”

Ø The four skinny trees in one vignette “grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger.” If one gave up the fight, they all would droop, “each with their arms around the other.”

Ø Esperanza looks at a boy who is interested in her, and “Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny.”

These are similes and metaphors—terms that you might associate with poetry, but that can be extremely effective in prose, too. They add to our ability to see and feel what she is describing, sometimes extremely vividly.

Sometimes, Sandra Cisneros piles more than one on top of another in a single sentence:

“The little wooden door that has wedged shut the dark for so long opens with a sigh and lets out a breath of mold and dampness, like books that have been left out in the rain.”

Your task:

Write a vignette (500-1,000 words) about a place, about a person, or about an incident. The place, person, or incident should have a strong meaning and significance for you. You will write using paragraphs, but not in essay form. This vignette will concentrate on your ability to use—naturally and poetically—similes and metaphors that add to the color, the meaning, and the feeling of your descriptions.

Don’t overdo it! If you use one simile or metaphor every 100 words, that would be the absolute limit! More likely, the average will be about one for every 200 words. Sharpen and hone until you’re left with the poetic images that really are strong, that really do create mental images and a kind of accuracy.