Strong modern poetry is often based on powerful imagery. Imagery is created by a poet when he uses a sense to turn a detail or an object into an experience. Instead of writing He sat and watched the sun rise, a good poet will try to take the reader's breath away with a specific sensory image of the sun rising such as...He sat and watched as the sun splashed against the horizon and spilled its orange warmth across the bay, slowly swirling and coloring even the deepest recesses of his private inlet. The contrast between these two lines should be apparent and helps illustrate how a poet needs to be an observer and shower, not a teller. With the second line I have tried to create the image of the sun as a liquid (used proper diction...splashed, spilled, also connotation of swirling etc). Even more poetic is the inclusion of secondary senses inside or alongside the original image. A more interesting line might be He tugged anbd tore at the slowly fraying hem of his sleeve as the sun splashed against the horizon and spilled its orange warmth across the bay, slowly swirling and coloring even the deepest recesses of his private inlet. Now this line helps develop the idea of a speaker who is uncomfortable with this approach of sunlight to his private area, maybe metaphorically suggesting that there is something about his person that he does not want held up to be viewed in the open.
Our goal as poets is to try to use the words we know to create the perfect image that will lead the reader to our meaning without coming out and saying it. I would love to have some people resond to this with some of their favorite image line/lines from poems they have read or written.
31 comments:
The line,"with its bright blue feathers, and its hazelnut brown eyes" from the poem "The Bird in my Window" is one of my favorites because it shows strong emotion and develops pictures in my head when i am reading it.
The stanza in "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" where it says,"The free bird thinks of another breeze, And the trade winds soft through the sighing trees, And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn, And he claims the sky," painted a picture of courage and freedom in my mind. It also made me think of those days where you just sit on the lawn and watch the sunset go down with the warm breeze, and you see that one bird fly by.
My favorite image is the stanza "Than oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim." From "A Bird Came Down" (or a bird came down the walk, both the same thing) I like it because it paints the picture of an ocean at first, but it is really talking about butterflies flying in the noon sky. I like how it starts of with the perfect image of a silver ocean, then the image morphs slowly into the image of a butterfly.
Another good line with image is in the poem "Voices." By Walt Whitman. The line is: "I see brains and lips closed—tympans and temples unstruck". I like this line because it shows an image WHILE making your imagination work. When I see "brains and lips closed" I think of someone who is very closed up and doesn't share anything. When I see "tympans and temples unstruck" I see tympan drums and people untouched by society or anything else. This line really shows you how closed up or un-social these people are.
A good line is "I hear a tapping on the window
It's the butterfly, fly, fly, fly
There he goes into the sky
Flying so high, the butterfly
I'll see you another day
Butterfly, butterfly, away" in the poem Butterfly, Butterfly by Sharon Adamson. I think of a butterfly on a nice summer day flying high in the clear blue sky.
I use good imagery in most of my poems. In my poem "Night Scares", I use the line, "The ground turns to quicksand, quickly swallowing my body."
Also in my poem "Nature", I use the line, "The sky is filled with pinks as a scarlet ball arises, like a lone orange in the ocean."
I enjoy these lines because instead of just telling they show.
Mr. Horvath tells me all the time that my poems need more imagery. I usually tell and not show, but i think that these lines are some of my best work with imagery. My weekly goal is imagery and it was the same last week. I do think I need to work on adding imagery to poems as well as everyone else. What is a poem that just tells you, "The cat walked to the door."
"The fat and lazy orange striped cat, leisurely flounced slowly to the large maroon door."
The last sentence is obviously the better sentence.
A good line is "I took the one less traveled by" from the poem the road not taken. It is telling us that someone is in a situation and needs to make a choice whether to do the right thing or what everybody else is doing. He took the road less traveled by meaning that he did what was right.
I love the line: "He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. "
The Eagel by Lord Tennyson. I can really imagine a golden eagle perched on the lip of a jutting rock face, high above the rest of the world, and then diving with immense power and speed for prey or territorial matters.
my favorite stanza is from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,"
because it gives me the perfect image of whats going on.
I was looking through a magazine and I read a poem called, "I wanderd lonley as a cloud" by William Wordsworth. As I read the poem I caught alot of imagery. For example: " I wanded lonley as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all a once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze." As I read that first stanza of the poem I was really able to picture the scenery and it reminded me of summer.The whole poem has alot of imagery including the second stanza. This poem has really inspired me to write some of my own poems with imagery.
i found a poem by Edgar Allan Poe called "Alone". when i was reading this poem i kept trying to find the meaning of it and trying to figure out why he called it "Alone". The one line that kid of put it all together for me was "And all i loved, i loved alone." when i read this line i really imagined that this man has never really done much in his life and all the people he has loved has never loved him back. so he has nobody at all, and probably for a long time. so to me this line really made me connect to why he titled this poem the way he did.
Lines of poetry that showed imagery for me was in the poem "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allen Poe. The lines were "I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-". I really love the imagery of the beach in these lines. It makes me think of summer which I love and cannot wait for =)
In a poem by Walt Whitman called "Facing West from California's Shores, he uses many strong images to convey age. The idea of "looking westward" is used to signify the aging of the speaker. Also "circle almost circled" helps lend to a feeling of approaching finality. Simple and clear metaphor like that creates a more thought provoking and more entertaining poem.
I don't remember a poem with great imagery in it but i can see what albuturkey(: was tying to say. Those lines don't only show you an image but have an upbeat mood in them too. The adjectives in them show that the the "bright blue feathers" for example, are a cheerful sight that shows that the speaker has good feelings towards that bird.
In the poem The Garden of Love, by William Blake, it says:
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
I think this is a perfect image because I definitely get a feeling of desolation, of death where life should be. The poem talks of a man going back to a place whee he played as a child and finding it changed. Here it says that there are gravestones and "priests in back gowns" and briars and darkness "where flowers should be." I can really get the image of the darkness and even imagine what the man must be seeing in his head of the place it used to be before it changed. I find that the sight imagery is really ecellent in this stanza, and it almost lets me feel its coldness.
I love the poem, "Hymn To The Sun" by the Fang people of Africa. It goes:
"The fearful night sinks
Trembling into the depth
Before your lightning eye
And the rapid arrows
From your fiery quiver.
With sparkling blows of light
your tear her cloak
the black cloak lined with fire
and studded with gleaming stars-
with sparkling blows of light
you tear the black cloak."
I can really appreciate this poem for the strong imagery, with the creative way the sunrise is described.
When looking for a poem for the poety report, I came across a poem called Speckles. I do not believe it was professionally written but I liked it. It was short and simple but at the same time was somehow good imagery. In her poem, Mary Fumento said, " The ground pokes through the snow, defiantly
Dark spots of brown And some frozen green." it was very simple but I could clearly see it. Simple sentences that can convey so much are more pleasing to a reader because it's less effort but more to gain for them. This author knew what she was doing. Too much imagery thrown at a reader is a turn off. This wasn't too wordy and " in your face" so that's why I liked it.
I read the poem called, Mentally Dead written by Amim Mansur, Bangladesh, i thought the imagry was spectacular ( it wasnt a proffesional writter, but anyhow many lines made me have a "movie in my head" potrying these imagages, such as mind rotting to the core, enlighting despots, untie the toughest knots, eternal nightmare, asylum of the very mind. This dark poem with dark feelings show a great picture, and you all should read this poem, so you can have " movie in your head" too :) x5485762
I love imagery! I think it is amazing what you can do with words to create something so real. I would say in my writing i use ALOT of metaphors. I guess i do it without even realizing it too. it seems natural to compare things and show the reader what i am talking about. i just started the imagery poem that was assigned this week. i use four different metaphors to describe an eye. (The poem is called, The Eye.) im not sure if i use too many metaphors that make the poem confusing because in my mind it makes sense but to a reader it might not be right. a few lines that i like in it are..
The eye is what others see, a lens focused on a blurry picture book
The eye is what is felt, a bouquet from the garden of emotions.
I am still in the process of writing this poem, (not sure on the title) but im about half way done, heres the line,
" the moring crow caws, as my heat does the same because i witness the alarm clock, scowling me to shame"
"the purple acsent clutter the sky of the rising summer sun, the faint smell of sunscreen consumes me, i cant believe its time! its really here i been waiting to arrive like the reader awaits the next page, but its camp, and theres gonna be no reading there"
"storm drains implanted into the sidewalk, consumeing everyones rain, the sadest moments, and overwhelming joy, rain fills the storm drains, but does all rain have to be caused by a storm?"
My favorite image poem is also a Walt Whitman poem, called A clear Midnight, "This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars."
This is one of the best image poem out there in my opinion.
I love imagery poems and my favorite would have to be The Sorcerer by Mary Fumento. I love all of her poems, but this one is my favorite.
The flickering flame enchants the mellow eyes
While whining wind encases faltering ears
And darkness entombs the dozing figure
Batches of colors explode
Tiny, bearded men scamper
While wicked beasts howl
Crystal walls gleam and shimmer
Flashes fall from a midnight sky
Metals fold like liquid
Flower to stone to lizard to leaf
Dozens of faceless, nameless cards
Sometimes a silky kerchief
And an occasional downy dove
Retreating adversaries with wary eyes
Always a cynic, sour skeptic
Wanting but not daring to believe
Ivory towers and ivy walls
Complete with princess calling
Knights and steeds and armour
A world of black and white
(His own somewhere in between)
Soulful serenades and ballads
Knights, courts and commands
A beautiful, endless time
Which never quite began
Awestruck in ancient revelries
The old man could not decide
Who had become more the believer
In his illusions and charades
His audience or himself
One of my favorite lines of poetry is from Emily Dickinson's "The Sky is Low". The line is: "A narrow wind complains all day how someone treated him;" I liked this line because it not only gave a different sense than sight, it gave a very good description of the whining wind. The whole poem is about nature being caught "Without her diadem", so each form of something beautiful is given an unattractive quality. Another line, for example, is the first line: "The sky is low, the clouds are mean," which does pretty much the same thing. It gives an image, but doesn't explain it too much, over loading the unfortunate readers with cushy, meaningless words.
Imagery is such a great poetic device to use in poetry. It really brings your poems to life! I think a poem that has great imagery is "I wandered lonely as a cloud" For example, the lines "I wandered lonely as a cloud/
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,/
When all at once I saw a crowd,/
A host, of golden daffodils;/
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,/
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze." have great imagery. Whenever I read the poem, I always picture that first stanza because the imagery is just so strong.
one poem that i think has realy great imagery in it is "the imagist poem" by william carlos williams the lines in it that really stand out as a good image are "a red wheel barrow, glazed with rain water beside the white chickens." these three lines of poetry seem completely random but they put a great image in my head so i really like it.
in my favorit poem speckles the 4 lines that give me the most imagry are The ground pokes through
The snow, defiantly
Dark spots of brown
And some frozen green
i can get a defnate picture of the snow melting at the end of winter to show the frozen graa underneath
At Aralea, I like that poem alot. I appreciate the imagery and also I really like contrast in poems. In this poem, my favorite line is,"fiery quiver." Fiery refers to something strong, and fiesty. Quiver refers to something that is scared or nervous. This is a great contrast that also uses strong diction.
A poem i have written a while ago has what I consider the most intense image i have ever created. It goes like this( the capitalized line is the image in case you did not realize).
How the air turns quite crisp,
as the somber sky swells and seethes black.
THE HOUSE IS WARMED BY THE FIERY BREATH,
OF THE STONE DRAGON TOPPED WITH HOLLY AND LIGHTS,
waiting for a visit on the 25th night.
See if you can figure out what the image represents.
I think that for a poet, it is harder to create a beautiful image with less words than it is with more. For example, it is easy to write alot of "fluff" and make something sound nice, but it is way harder to write only a few words and make something strong still. Does anybody have examples of that?
At yeahwhateveritsalmosttheendofschoolidon'tneedtothinkofagoodname, I like that poem alot. The words fiery breath are very strong in this poem. What does the stone dragon stand for? It is topped with holly.. But I'm sure what it is...
I really enjoyed this poem. The imagery was expressed so strongly, to a point i have never read before. i easily saw the sun splashing against the horizon and spilled its orange warmth across the bay. That is good imagery and a great way to explain it.Slowly swirling and coloring even the deepest recesses of his private inlet. Once again great imagery and worded perfectly.
Post a Comment