Every writer has a stable of ideas…

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I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a metaphor from writer Rebecca Solnit…

I was unaware of the existence of the fascinating website TomDispatch until this week. Launched in 2002 as “a regular antidote to the mainstream media,” the site  features the commentaries of writer Tom Engelhardt and the original work of such authors as Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben, and Adam Hochschild.

My own reader, Paul Corr, kindly sent me a link from the site in order to highlight a terrific metaphor from Rebecca Solnit. Here it is:

Every writer has a stable of ideas that never make it to the racetrack and I’d been trotting this pony out recreationally every once in a while. 

A writer, historian and activist, Solnit is the author of 17 books on an exceptionally wide range of topics. I’m a big fan of her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking. But the one for which she is best known is likely Men Explain Things to Me. This seven-essay book, which I have also read, is both  insightful and very witty. If you don’t want to read the book (although you should), start with her TomDispatch essay, here. It summarizes her point of view very nicely.

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