Imagery/Images

Imagery

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."

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."

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."

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.

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."

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.