The poem "Difference" by Mark Doty explains how words are used to make sense of the unknown. Doty begins by choosing an object from the natural world, a jellyfish, and describing it. He calls their form "alien grace", something that we cannot really grasp but only try to explain with words and figures that we do know. The jellyfish is foreign, yet similar to other things we come in contact with so often. That is what Doty explains in the second half of his poem: the unmistakable connection between objects using words but also the separation of the object by the use of those same words.
Doty’s use of metaphors to describe jellyfish in the first half of his poem is, to me, very effective. Doty gives the reader a seemingly easily recognizable object and then proceeds to show the reader how little they know about it. He uses irony to add to the confusion by saying: “a dozen identical” and then right before he starts to use the metaphors: “every one does something unlike”. By contrasting their likeness and their differences, Doty shows how the words describing them can both connect recognizable shapes to the jellyfish and also separate them from each other.
A main focus of “Difference” is the use of metaphors to describe something that otherwise is just “sheer ectoplasm”. By using metaphors and similes we apply a shape to the object. The ironic part of this is that it is by connecting jellyfish with other objects, changing its shape to the shape of other objects, we indeed separate it from everything else and thus define it on its own. A question that follows then is how do you describe the shapes used to describe the jellyfish? How does one describe a balloon? A spherical shaped ball that has a tendency to float? If so, then how would one describe a sphere or a ball? The answer is by using other metaphors which would lead to a perpetual circle of interchanging shapes, connecting one shape to another.
However, it would be ignorant to say all shapes are the same. One can tell just by looking around that a bottle does not have the same shape of a desk, or that a shoe does not take on the same shape as that of a Styrofoam cup. Even similarly shaped objects, a breathing heart and a jellyfish, are not the same. It is a compilation of metaphors that accurately portray the shape of an object. A jellyfish is like a rolled condom but also like a plastic purse while at the same time sharing the characteristics of an expensive lamp shade.
Doty also notes how we skew the image of an object by comparing it to such things. The grace of the jellyfish is lost when we compare it to something it is not; we change what it is. Here Doty is not so much lamenting this fact as he is simply pointing out that it exists.
Another interesting point Doty makes is the “transparence of like and as”. Transparency is exactly what like and as add to a metaphor, making it a simile. These simple words take away the sharp defined outline of the shape and muffle it, distort it, and make the outline a sort of guess work so that the object being described can fit perfectly into the edges. It is an ingenious way of describing similes.
Doty points out in his poem that words both uniquely define and connect objects by using comparisons and how doing so both changes the state of the object being described and identifies the object as it is. Without metaphors, similes, and figurative language, we could not describe anything and thus it is by the use of figurative language that we are able to describe at all.


Sidenote that is below the text: while writing, i couldnt help but think: hey this is alot like the number pi. its like 22/7 and similar to 3.14 but its also as undefined as infinite, all the while being completly defined as pi. Thats just what it is: pi. its nothing else, theres no other way to describe it and maintain what it is. unless we use figurative language but i dont know how to describe pi using figurative language so i didnt put anything about it in my text. and it is kind of irrelevant but i had to tell someone...