Arts Vanity: Some Thoughts on Metaphors

When I’m writing a metaphor, I always want to compare the natural world to something manmade, and vice versa. Diamonds on black velvet become sparkling stars on a clear night. Fallen leaves on the ground are scattered rubies, gleaming in the sun. Dewdrops are pearls, pearls are dewdrops.

I took a fantastic class my sophomore fall called “Your Brain on Poetry,” where we learned about Roman Jakobson’s poetic function of language, which “projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination.”

I didn’t know what that sentence meant for most of the semester either, but I think it’s something like this: Humans really like sameness. Beauty comes from a sense of familiarity, of knowing, and that’s why poetry — created through alliteration, assonance, parallelism, repetition, and rhyme — is a thing.

I think that CrimArts has been a place for me to find the sameness in other people. In spite of our board’s incredible diversity in every outwardly measurable way (except gender, lol) deep down, we are the same soul copy-pasted 60-something times.

I wanted to find people that have the same views as me: Namely, that “Shrek” is great and that Jonathan Bailey is a king among men. Everyone on CrimArts holds space for “Wicked” jokes. There is such a beautiful sense of purpose and community on this board that I don’t think you can find anywhere else on campus (don’t sue me, News).

My favorite CrimArts memories from this semester are watching “Over the Garden Wall” on a windy October night, Erlisa trying to justify her “My Little Pony” game addiction to Melina and me on the shuttle ride back to Pfoho (other travelers pretending they weren’t listening but they were definitely listening) and of course, Grand Elections this year, when most of the “roasts” could better be described as glazing with the slightest sprinkle of sass. I was delighted by Isabelle’s roast though — PLEASE add me to the email list!

I can’t wait to indoctrinate a new generation of staff writers in 2026. There is something magical — one could say, metaphorical — about Arts, and I hope that Caroline and I will be able to convince the compers of that. Otherwise they’ll think we’re all crazy.

Over winter break, I will miss CrimArts. Definitely not Admin, but Arts.

—Outgoing Books Executive and incoming Comp Director and Editor-at-Large Laura B. Martens, aspiring Hobbit, can be reached at [email protected].