proximoception

Finding the right metaphor for metaphors requires ... a lot of other metaphors, since who they're used by and for what purpose and to what effect are necessary context, sans which the chosen metaphor-metaphor will fall back into mere vesselhood, thinghood. And all those other elements must also be metaphors, or how else would they plausibly interact with this far-fetched standin? To keep what poetry is figured out, thus use it for what you need to use it for, you'll have to find some part of the world that is already a model of what all these things are to one another. Lucky for you "the world" is not some static thing but a manipulable one, a shortcuttable one, subject to tucks, cuts, fast-forwards, overlaps, interweavings, associations, narratives, puns, trompes de l'oeil, projections, dialogues, restatements, parentheticals, and other discontinuities. Within that juggled-rhizomes flux there will be many pictures - the trouble will be to see them through all the others occupying the exact same space, like Michelangelo's statue through his marble if his marble were a flaming ship in a thunderstorm, and then to fix them in some sortable sort of order.