When we speak of
imagery, we're really talking about
the way we summon up a picture, or portrait
in the minds of our readers. How do we
take a thought, or patterns of thought
images, or felt-thought, and translate
it into something concrete and knowable?
Let's first talk about five general catagories
of images, or descriptive devices, we
can use to develop our image motifs.
-
The
Testimonial:
In this kind of image, we want to bring
out the exactness, the highly texturized
vision of an image, such as: inside
the curved, smooth surface of the tin
can, brown rust and dirt lipped the
inside wall and clung to the metal.
- Flat Visual:
Here, we want to try to be as literal as
possible, staying in the three-dimensional.
Here we look for simplicity, clarity,
and a strong sense of the now: the
wooden slats, or the streaked window.
- Figurative
Image: A fusion of the literal with
one of the other types of imagery. For
instance: the dark pines of hate were
cold.
- Pathetic Fallacy:
An image that has been colored, and sometimes
selected by connecting it to our emotional
state or personality. The lake was
deep and cold as my heart.
- Felt-thought
Image:
Here,
we're looking for a literal image that
will connect, as a part of its meaning,
on a deeper, universal level. My car
bucked up the the road, complaining, as
I shook my head and cursed.
Specificity
In addition to these five devices mentioned
above, we also want to look at the level
and depth of our descriptions--how general,
or specific should we be. In most poetry
workshops, you will hear much about the
importance of detailed, concrete descriptions.
This workshop will not be any different.
Our code will be--state the general,
in the specific. In other words, by
focusing in on the details, you will actually
be more accurately reflecting the feelings
or ideas you are trying to express about
the larger, general ideas.
This is not to say
that the more generalized description is
of no use to us. Where the more detailed
description asks the reader to focus in
on the highly specific emotional connections
in a poem, the more generalize description
allows the reader to fill in the spaces
left open by the more generalized description,
and to use that space as a locus of meditation
in time. In most cases, however, it is better
to be as specific and concrete as you can--remember
the axiom: it's always easier to cut
than it is to add.
Specific imagery
is called fixed imagery. Fixed
imagery is the imagery of film or movies--it
creates the most vivid and visual experience
we can get through words--many times using
metaphor or simile to do so. Notice how
Pablo Neruda uses fixed imagery to let you
see these socks in his poem, "Ode to
My Socks."
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. . . Outrageous
socks,
my feet became
two fish
made of wool,
two long sharks
of ultramarine blue
crossed
by one golden hair,
two gigantic blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks. . .
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Moving
Image
The moving image is a static, or fixed image
that the poet bends into something else. The
moving image requires that the poet transform
the image into a new type of image. Look at
the way Wilmer Mills changes the image
of sleep in "Questions in a Doctor's
Waiting Room."
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I want to fall
asleep, and enter the slipstream,
Liminal land of threshold, edge, and
stile.
Call it a sliding scale. I'll pay
when I please.
But sleep is
difficult when all the walls
Are covered with cheesy art:
Watercolors
from a photograph,
Life-size poster-prints of watercolors.
On the floor: linoleum made
To look like tile, imitation tile.
Life imitates . . .oh, what do you
call it? Kitsch?
So there, I've given it a name. Now
sleep!
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See how wonderfully
Mills moves through the concrete and into
the abstract by bending the image, stretching
it to fit the movement of the poem.
General
to Specific
Sometimes, a poet
may want to move from a more generalized
image into the specific to lead, or focus
the reader into an idea or portrait. Notice
how Peter Makuck moves from the general
to the specific in "At Encinitas."
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In a gallery
on the beach
I'm stopped
by a steel sculpture--
a man harnessed
to a cart that
an ox
might pull, the bulk
of it, heavy wheels
and wide steel rims,
the man leaning as if into a hill,
legs and shoulders
muscled from years
without release,
the neck corded thick,
and the head--
faceless, but why?
Harness straps,
traces, high sideboards,
and inside: a huge face,
a meticulous mask,
bloated and
vain,
lashed like a felon
to the bottom
of the cart.
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The
Deep Image
In
the deep image, we tie together our inner
and outer states in such a way as to touch
on the deep, psychological, archetypal and
spiritual realm of universal feelings. Here
is Lynnell Edwards talking about time.
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No
Bigger Than a Minute
They skip unpercieved
into hours,
the end of the day, the week, and
before
we can say
the word, it is next summer,
first frost, the New Year. Where
did the
time go? We wonder if
we might find it by calling out,
coaxing it
from behind
the big couch or under the quilt,
as when a small
child steps forward,
shy but eager to be useful.
My lost
minute, we exclaim.
My nearest one come back at last.
And we hold
her close again,
though she dreams of next week, next
year,
the long, surging
forever without us.
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See how time moves
forward as an object in the poem? Through
abstract and specific, we come to feel as
if the time we experience in the poem is
real on both the psychological/emotional
and the chronological scale.
Abstract
Image
The
abstract image works through its
power to allow the reader to connect on
many levels of meaning. A good abstract
image poem is held together by underlying
forms that build on one another to keep
the poem cohesive. Look at the way Leigh
Anne Couch ties in these fragments of image
in "Minor Season."
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From the creekbed
widow
she gathers patience
misshapen stones to keep hands busy
a moon a face a
mouth
scratched then cut
one stone into the other
taking hours or years of steady motion
a clock's faithfulness days
of pistachios clementines blue-bottled
gin
her life calling to be called back
again and again
the refrigerator gnaws through mornings
afternoons hunched and scribbling
at her desk
semi-transparent one
of no one
a mouth a face a
moon a circle
encircled
fixed in blackberry winter.
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The
Emblem
With the emblem,
we use thematically integral images that
connect the parts of the poem together in
a symbolic way. Robert Wrigley does a great
job of using soap as an emblem in his poem
of the same name.
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Soap
When I consider
the worn, petal-scented bar of soap
my lover inadvertently left in the
deep woods,
alongside the river we had camped
by for a week,
I think first
of watching her bathe there,
how I waited with her towel in the
sun, her clean clothes
warming on the radiant stones.
Then I think
of a man not unlike myself finding
it,
a pink and botanical soap, in a perfectly
scooped dish
on the back of a large, water-polished
stone.
He senses her
in the curve and slope
of its undoing at her skin, and holding
it
to his lips he takes in some faint
but vivid
scent of her,
stepping clean into her towel and
my arms,
which now are his, and who then, unable
to help himself,
offers the soap's pale astringent
underside a kiss.
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Now that you've learned
a bit more about images, and how to use
them to dress your poetry, go to Exercise
3, and have some fun.
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