Possible Clues:

• Heart of gold, for one
• "Mixed" figure of speech
• Mother upset about father backing image
• Figure of speech, oddly, to hamper or harm poet
• Reporter's come across a boundary in symbolic form
• "Life's a beach" is one
• Figure of speech suggesting something is what it resembles
• Rhetorical device encountered once before in speech
• Sand in an hourglass, for time
• Ship of fools is a figure of speech