Oscar Hammerstein's similes still sing delightfully. . .

My main activity since compiling the first edition of  Similes Dictionary  has been as editor and publisher of  the online theater-zine  Curtainup.com. Naturally, this has led me to many apt examples in dramatic dialogue and songs with which to enrich the new edition.

The new edition  features   many nifty additions  from song lyrics,   but
few song writers can match Oscar Hammerstein’s gift for poetic figures of speech that sing gloriously.   With the Berkshire Theater Group  doing a  revival  of  Oklahoma!  I   welcomed  a chance to  actually  hear some  of  the  Dictionary's  entries   sung  on  the stage of  the beautifully restored  Colonial Theater in Pittsfield -- for example:

The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye and it
looks like it’s climbin’ clear up to the sky

(And I) Sit by myself like a cobweb on a shelf


(I am) free as a breeze, free like a bird in the
woodland wild, free like a gypsy, free like a
child

And, of course there's this from Ado Annie's famous "I cain't Say No"

Watchagonna do when a feller gets flirty
An'wants to talk purty
Watcha gonna do?
So s'posing that he says
That your lips are like cherries, Or Roses or berries