Make that two figures of speech, and both involving H20. I encountered them earlier today while reading a four-day-old Hamnet review, written by the Daily Beast‘s Chris Feil.
The deplorable terms are (a) “pool of tears” and (b) “puddle of tears.” I’m not saying that Hamnet‘s Globe Theatre finale doesn’t deliver a meltdown. It surely does. I’m saying that any and all allusions to pools or puddles of tears are verboten.
In traffic violation terms, writing “puddle of tears” or “pool of tears” is equal to drunk driving, or perhaps even hitting a pedestrian and leaving the scene with squealing tires and burnt-rubber smoke in the air.
Feil: “The first thing you’ve likely heard about Oscar-winner director Chloé Zhao’s latest film, Hamnet — before even predictions about its Oscar chances — is the degree to which it is leaving crowds in a pool of tears.”
Less than two seconds after reading this sentence, I was telepathically muttering epithets….”You shameless motherfucker…pool of tears?…you craven shoveller… you should be bitchslapped for that”, etc.
