Effective Use Of Metaphors In Michael Lee's Pass On

Within his poem, “Pass On,” Michael Lee employs metaphor, cacophony, and analogy to reframe death as part of an ongoing cosmic process, rather than a sad and permanent ending. Lee elegantly uses metaphor to describe the painful final seconds of a homicide victim’s life as part of a larger progression. As Stephen, presumably a friend of the poem’s speaker, bleeds to death following a violent attack, the speaker compares Stephen’s humanity with a crowd quickly departing an auditorium, “the day Stephen was murdered / everything that made us love him rushed from his knife wounds /as though his chest were an auditorium / his life an audience leaving in single file” (Lee, 2012, lines 25-28). This comparison of Stephen’s humanity, “everything that