“So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paper clip by literary historians and called their 'oeuvre'.”
Although this does not sound like a particularly rich image, a metaphor can communicate so much about a particular image that poets use them more than any other type of figurative language.
I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.