Imagery
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Classroom Discussion
This post is a lengthy remembering of an actual lesson I taught in my Poetry class, an advanced elective (thus the students had chosen to study poetry, had some literature background, and were juniors or seniors in high school). The course was structured as a dialogue between teacher and students—with participation in discussions being a requisite for achievement—and required students to keep a journal of their reactions to the poetry and to the class, with the teacher then responding to their reactions. And, yes, students are capable of this level of sophistication. The teaching “methodology” employed here is detailed in the post, Teaching Basics, and the explication of the poetry is similar to that in the post, Poetry as Perception.
Student responses are in quotation marks and italicized.
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So, we’ve studied the nuts and bolts of poetry building; now we come to the adornments: imagery, word-pictures painted by the poet. Part of what makes poetry rare and unique is that it can let us see things in ways we never have before. Recall the poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and the way that Williams cinematically focused his word-camera on one image after another, before blending them together in our mind’s eye. There was an actual Imagist movement in poetry at the start of the 20th century; these Imagists felt that poetic word-images better convey experience than words that convey meaning. As Archibald MacLeish perfectly put it, “A poem should not mean, but be.” Hearing all of this, what type of poetry do you think they wrote?
“Flower?”
“Trees?”
Sorry, sorry, poorly worded question on my part. What I should have said is, what format do you think they used in writing their poems?
“Oh, free verse!”
Right you are, as we saw with Williams. To them, anything else would be artificial. But I’m talking about the Imagists here, an actual movement in poetry. You could hardly accuse Shakespeare or Walt Whitman, or Emily Dickinson of not using imagery.
Ok, if imagery is more pictures than lectures, let’s look at the two poems that were in your journal assigment: “November,” by Amy Lowell–one of the foremost Imagists, by the way–and “Spring Torrents” by Sara Teasedale.
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In a Garden
Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.
Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.
Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.
And I wished for night and you.
I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,
White and shining in the silver-flecked water.
While the moon rode over the garden,
High in the arch of night,
And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness.
Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!
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“In a Garden” is a great selection for imagery and not just because Amy Lowell was one of the leading Imagists. My referring to poetic imagery is a little misleading since it can be interpreted to refer only to visual imagery. But imagery can appeal to all the senses–which are?
“Sight, hearing…
“Smell, taste…
“Touch…”
[pause]
Okay, to those we can add movement and tension.
“Tension?”
Hm. Think of an Olympic runner in the starting blocks. You can see the strain in her muscles. That kind of tension. Ok, when we refer to these types of images in poetry, we’ll use specific terms for them. What’s the adjective for the sense of sight?
“Visual?”
Yes. Hearing?
“Auditory?”
We’ll use aural.
Smell?
“Nasal?”
Hm, that more accurately refers to the nose itself.
“Wait, wait. There are nerves. Um, um, oldfactory?”
Well, that may be a good way to remember it, but there is no “d”. Just olfactory. What about taste?
[long pause]
Gustatory. Related to “gusto,” as in “eating with gusto.”
Touch?
“Tactile?”
Yup. tactile. Movement? Think of a kind of energy in physics.
[pause]
“Oh, kinetic.”
Right. kinetic
Tension? That’s a more obscure term. It’s kinesthetic.
“Is that related to ‘aesthetic.’?”
Yes, in the sense of perception or sensation. Think of anesthesia, also, which is a lack of sensation.
Now that I’m sure you have these in your notes, let’s take a look at the poem. Our first image in the garden is of a ?
“Fountain.”
Right. What’s the first image.
“Water gushing out of a sculpture.”
And what kind of image is that?
[pause]
“Kinetic!”
Brilliant, as ever. Next image? And what type is it?
“Irises. Visual.”
And?
“What’s ‘dabble’?”
To dip or splash, usually associated with water, but you may have heard of dabbling in the arts, also. We are dabbling in poetry. Ok, and that is what kind of imagery?
“Kinetic!”
And what figure of speech?
[long pause]
Do irises have feet to dabble?
“Metaphor!”
Brilliant yet again.
Another type of image in the poem?
“’Damp smell of the ferns’ is um…olfactory.”
How about “and the air is throbbing with it”?
“Kinesthetic?”
Exactly. So, all of these examples are ways that Lowell wants to put us in the garden with her, to “sense” the garden as she does. That’s the power of imagery, as a poet, sharing your sense of experience with the reader. And the wonder of poetry for the reader is quote-unquote seeing things through another person’s senses, thus experiencing another world. Pretty nifty, I’d say.
“Pretty neat to think of it that way, Mr.B.”
For those of us who love poetry, we are fortunate enough “to boldly go where we have never gone before.”
“Uh-oh, teacher trying to be relevant to students.”
Hey, I was fairly young when Star Trek first appeared on television; it doesn’t just belong to you kiddies.
[snickers]
Let’s move on to “Spring Torrents,” by Sara Teasdale.
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Spring Torrents
By Sara Teasdale
Will it always be like this until I am dead,
Every spring must I bear it all again
With the first red haze of the budding maple boughs,
And the first sweet-smelling rain?
Oh I am like a rock in the rising river
Where the flooded water breaks with a low call,
Like a rock that knows the cry of the waters
And cannot answer at all.
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“Mr. B., about the title.”
Yeees.
“When I think of Spring, I think of nice things, flowers, bunnies, whatever. But ‘torrents’?”
I know, right off at the title, something is wrong. “Torrents” is such a strong visual and aural and kinetic image that it stands in contrast to the pleasant associations that we usually have with Spring. An example of how a title can be an integral part of a poem, instead of just an id.
“Yeah, well, the first line doesn’t make me feel any better.”
How do we usually think of Spring that is in contradiction to this first line?
“Spring is supposed to be, like, rebirth. Plants and animals reproduce. I think she’s using this contrasting to the word ‘bear’ in line 2. Instead of bearing being rebirth of life, for her it’s the rebirth of pain.”
Great. Apparently you really “got” the poem. And it’s a good example of kinesthetic imagery not necessarily having to apply just to physical tension, but also to mental tension. You can feel her “tightness” in the first two lines. We then get pleasant visual and olfactory images which contrast with the first two lines, setting up further tension. What’s causing the tension?
“Um, I googled her biography, and I guess she suffered from depression because she committed suicide. So her depression with life made Spring not bearable because it is full of life.”
Good. One very famous line of poetry is from T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”: “April is the cruelest month.” Ok, she then compares herself to a rock. Figure of speech?
“Simile.”
Why is that an apt comparison? Tommy?
“Well, the water of Spring is flowing all around her, the life and energy and rebirth. But she is just a lump, a rock that isn’t in the flow. The water just breaks around her, without affecting her, and continues on the other side.”
Okay, so go ahead, make my job useless. Seriously, though, that’s a great summation by Tommy. It’s a very sad poem. I wanted to use it to demonstrate how imagery can define the intention of a poem. In this case, the water of spring swirling around her poignantly describes her mood, feeling isolated in the world. So we see that imagery doesn’t have to be pretty.
Assignment: write a poem in which the imagery supports the meaning. It can be free or formal verse. Just always be sure to have a reason for your line-breaks.
Let’s look at one more example, page 46.
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This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Wiliam Carlos Williams
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(Note: You can view most poems on the website, Poetry Foundation.)
(Note: My Poetry Recordings Playlist: At the very bottom of the post Is a recording. To view my entire playlist of poetry recordings, hover over “1/18” in the upper right corner, then click on ‘My Poetry Recordings Playlist:´and make selection.)
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