A metaphor, said Robin Morgan in The Anatomy of Freedom, is "the energy charge that leaps between images, revealing their connections."

If that's the case, Dr. Mardy Grothe's book I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like (HarperCollins, 2008), might be compared to a power-storage facility--an environmentally friendly one, of course. In it you'll find nearly 2,000 highly charged figures of speech, modestly described in the book's subtitle as "History's Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes."

With the same wit and enthusiasm that he brought to his studies of chiasmus (Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You, 1999) and paradox (Oxymoronica, 2004), Grothe sets out to refresh our language and our spirits with this entertaining collection of figurative comparisons. And for the most part, he succeeds.

Following a brisk and decidedly non-academic introduction to analogies, metaphors, and similes, each of the book's 15 chapters opens with a short essay on a familiar metaphorical theme, such as "Marriage Is a Souvenir of Love" or "Sex Is an Emotion in Motion." That's succeeded by a collection of loosely related specimens, many of which have not yet been embalmed in conventional collections of quotations. Metaphors and similes cooked up by Plato and Seneca appear alongside tropes from Minnie Pearl and Jerry Seinfeld.

To his credit, Grothe has taken the trouble to quote accurately and also to correct some common misattributions. We learn, for instance, that Gloria Steinem was not the first to say "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" (Australian writer Irina Dunn deserves full credit).

And Grothe lets us know that Virginia senator John Randolph was attacking Edward Livingston, not Henry Clay, when he said, "He shines and stinks like a rotten mackerel by moonlight."

Though the fussy professor in me would welcome full citations (just where did Rita Mae Brown say, "Love is the wild card of existence"?), this book, thank goodness, is nothing like those endlessly reproduced catalogs of misquotes found on so many dismal websites.

That said, on a few occasions Dr. Grothe's habit of glossing the figures he quotes can be more annoying than enlightening. For example, does Austin O'Malley's brilliant metaphor for memory--"a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food" (Keystones of Thought, 1914)--really need elucidation? Apparently Grothe thinks so. "The point is," he tells the slower members of the class, "that we forget the essential and remember--often with great clarity--the tantalizing trivia."

In one instance, I'm afraid, his commentary is just flat-out wrong:

Another remedy for those who are having trouble writing is to begin talking. There's something about thinking out loud--whether done to a friend, aloud to oneself, or into a tape recorder--that gets the juices flowing again. Robert Frost said it this way:

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

Perhaps if Grothe had included the next line from Frost's letter--"My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here"--he would have caught the significance of the plumbing metaphor: according to the poet, talking doesn't get a writer's "juices flowing"; on the contrary, it dries them up. Or as Ernest Hemingway once put it, less figuratively, "Okay, shut up and write."
But my complaints are trifles, the quibbles of a fan. On page after page, Dr. Grothe illustrates his point that a figurative comparison "can be intellectually nourishing as well as tasty." And I have to thank him ahead of time, for I know that sooner or later many of his discoveries will make their way to the pages of this website. Consider, for instance, the analogy he passes along from author and educator Beatrice Joy Chute:

Grammar is to a writer what anatomy is to a sculptor, or the scales to a musician. You may loathe it, it may bore you, but nothing will replace it, and once mastered it will support you like a rock.

If you enjoy the intellectual play of language, you will surely take pleasure in I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like. To learn more about Mardy Grothe's fine books for linguaphiles, visit his website at DRMARDY.COM.