Harold Bloom

 "Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative. Figuration is a departure from the literal, and the form of a great poem itself can be a trope ("turning") or figure. A common dictionary equivalent for "figurative language is "metaphorical", but a metaphor actually is a highly specific figure, or turning from the literal."

Four fundamental tropes: irony, synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor.
Irony - commits those who use it to issues of presence and absence.
Synecdoche - "symbol" - figurative substitute of a part for a whole also suggest that incompletion in which something within the poem stands for something outside it.
Metonymy - contiguity replaces resemblance, since the name or prime aspect of anything is sufficient to indicate it, provided it is near in space to what serves as substitute.
Metaphor - transfers the ordinary association of one word to another.

"Figuration of tropes create meaning, which could not exist without them, and this making of meaning is largest in authentic poetry, where an excess or overflow emanates from figurative language, and brings about a condition of newness."

from The Best Poems of the English Language

 Harold Bloom reciting Wallace Stevens 'Tea at the Palaz of Hoon'

"The Anatomy of Influence": Six Questions for Harold Bloom