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| Once again, I am honored to be a quest editor for the Poetry Newsletter. Those on this site who know me best know that I consider imagery to be one of the most important ingredients of poetry. Poetry should captivate the reader and one one the best ways to do this is with the device of imagery. |
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Imagery
In past issues, this newsletter has discussed the topic of imagery many times, but I don’t believe we can ever overdo the topic of imagery. Imagery is one of the vital ingredients of poetry and could be the lifeblood that flows through a poem.
As writers, we hear much about ‘showing versus telling.’ Showing brings the reader into the story. In poetry, imagery brings the reader into the poem.
Here are some things that have been said of imagery in poetry:
In poems, imagery is used to help make a greater meaning, and add to the feeling of the poem. Imagery can create both a picture and a sound in the mind of the reader.
Joseph Nurijand
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg
But, the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.
Mary Oliver in Poetry Handbook
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Carl Sandburg in Poetry Considered
The job of the poet is to freeze the image as well as possible in a way that feels very real and human (concrete, intellectual and emotional). Taste a lemon and the sensation last for only a few seconds; write an image that conveys what it is like to eat a lemon and the sensation lives longer.
Owl Online Writing Lab
A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul."
Soren Kierkegaard
A poet uses words not to explain something, and not to describe something, but to make something. Poet means “maker.” Poetry is not the language of objective explanation but the language of imagination. It makes an image of reality in such a way as to invite our participation in it. We do not have more information after we read a poem, we have more experience. It is not an examination of what happens, but an immersion in what happens.
Eugene H. Peterson in Living the Message
Below is a classical poem of imagery. As you read the poem, try to imagine the place where the poet is taking you and vision of the owl that he portrays. This is imagery; this is a poet ‘showing’ us, taking us and immersing us into what is happening. He makes us part of the happening.
The Owl
By Edward Thomas
Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved ;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind ; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
Edward (Philip) Thomas was born in Lambeth, London, of Welsh descent and he was educated at St Paul's college and then Lincoln College at Oxford University (where he studied history). A prolific writer of prose (including biographies of Richard Jeffiries, Swinburne, and Keats), and a moderately successful journalist, he began writing poetry in 1912 under the pseudonym Edward Eastaway) but did not devote himself fully to the medium until 1913 after a meeting with Robert Frost, the American poet, who by then was living in England.
Thomas enlisted in 1915 with the Artist's Rifles as a private but was killed two years later at Arras having achieved the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. His poems include some of the most noted pieces from the genre, capturing the love of the English countryside unlike any other.
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/thomas/
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An article about imagery
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A variety of poems of imagery
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|  | Heaven (E)
The overwhelming experience of my first horseriding-lesson. Assignment for A-1 Academy.
#1228224 by mars   |
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Because I am a guest editor, I do have interactive comments. However, I do ask that you read and review the highlighted poems and the article. As you read each poem, pay special attention to the use of imagery.
I welcome your comments about the use of imagery in poetry.
Thanks to the staff of Writing.com for allowing me to guest edit this edition.
larryp |
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Poetry: March 07, 2007 Issue [#1584]
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