While the left side of the brain is typically considered to be the language center, some scientific research claims that understanding simile and metaphor, the building blocks of poetry, is done primarily in the right side of the brain. Let’s use some randomly generated similes to write poems today, to challenge our right brains (see the simile generator). For further reading on poetry and the brain, read Julie Kane’s Poetry as Right-Hemispheric Language, and Poetry Magazine’s conversation between Ange Mlinko and Iain McGilchrist This is Your Brain on Poetry. Also read the fun poem An Exercise For Limbering Up the Right Brain, by David Henson.