Be The Beast

When we write first person poems or poems that circulate around a character, how effective do you find it to relate them to animals or mythical creatures?

Personally, I use vampires a lot because of their accentuation of emotion and actions, re Anne Rice.

I'd like to write poems on some other topics that include dehumanising a character by relating it to an animal. However, I'd prefer to avoid the obvious of each scenario, and have a subtle relation that requires some more analysis before the real imagery is brought out.

Thoughts muchly appreciated.
HxR.

I seem to do that sometimes to, for instance, I wrote a poem, I believe the one I speak of is "Thoughtless" but at this time i could be wrong. That talks on how My emotions were taking control, that the beast withing was emerging, meaning my anger. So in using an animal, or mythilogical creature to visualize the emotions expressed is a great way to present a poem.

I like to go on nature as a guild line and change it to my feelings at the time so if its dark and things out my window are shadowed they look like creatures of another world...

I haven`t used animals very much but I do love to use nature ,In one poem I use a ship to represent myself,These are a lot of good ideas though.

I had not yet tried any animals yet... but i was thinking of bringsum changs in my poetry so i guss saying abt sum things will be a grt thing...

Nope i havnt tried any animals either :D

Cool, quite a few varied opinions there. For those that haven't would you consider using any? Personally, I think it's quite effective.

Interesting idea. Guess I did that for Burning Wolf,
huh, and as for vampires, I didn't exactly channel the vampire psyche, I just based Tear It Out and Envy the Shallow on Spike and Angel from Btvs, respectively.

I have written some animal poetry and some about insects. Nature has it own poetry.