As everything we experience comes to us through our senses, the use of imagery (sense impressions) is fundamental in communicating experience to the reader. Of the various types of imagery, visual and auditory are by far the two most common in poetry because we rely most heavily on our senses of sight and hearing. However, the more of our senses which are engaged, the more thoroughly we are involved in an experience. Sexual experience, for instance, engages all of our senses--visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory--and that is at least part of the reason why sex can be such a powerful total experience.
The same applies to poetry: the more of our senses the writer brings into play, the more deeply the reader's experience is going to be. For that reason, skillful poets will evoke several of our senses simultaneously rather than just relying on a single sense (the more common practice of still-learning writers). For example, look at the following poem by William Carlos Williams:
"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
Much of the poem is presented in strictly visual terms; however, in the last three lines, Williams evokes not only sight but also taste ("delicious" and "sweet") and touch ("cold") to communicate the joy the speaker has experienced eating the plums. These multiple sense impressions communicate more effectively than any single visual image precisely why the speaker really isn't sorry that he ate the plums, no matter what he's said; the cumulative effect of the multiple images is to override and contradict the speaker's attempt at apology.
Karl Shapiro also evokes multiple senses in "Haircut":
O wonderful nonsense of lotions of Lucky Tiger,
Of savory soaps and oils of bottle-bright green,
The gold of liqueurs, the unguents of Newark and Niger,
Powders and balms and waters washing me clean;
In mirrors of marble and silver I see us forever
Increasing, decreasing the puzzles of luminous spaces
As I turn, am revolved and am pumped in the air on a lever,
With the backs of my heads in chorus with all of my faces.
Scissors and comb are mowing my hair into neatness,
Now pruning my ears, now smoothing my neck like a plain;
In the harvest of hair and the chaff of powdery sweetness
My snow-covered slopes grow dark with the wooly rain.
And the little boy cries, for it hurts to sever the curl,
And we too are quietly bleating to part with our coat.
Does the barber want blood in a dish? I am weak as a girl,
I desire my pendants, the fatherly chin of a goat.
I desire the pants of a bear, the nap of a monkey
Which trousers of friction have blighted down to my skin.
I am bare as a tusk, as jacketed up as a flunkey,
With the chest of a moth-eaten camel growing within.
But in death we shall flourish, you summer-dark leaves of my head,
While the flesh of the jaw ebbs away from the shores of my teeth;
You shall cover my sockets and soften the boards of my bed
And lie on the flat of my temples as proud as a wreath.
The opening lines combine visual and olfactory images, evoking both the sight and smell of a barbershop, while "washing me clean" in line 4 of the first stanza introduces tactile imagery, as well; in consequence, the reader becomes quickly immersed in the physical sensations of the barbershop and, shortly, of the haircut itself. Visual and tactile imagery predominate, continuing to run through the entire poem, along with auditory imagery introduced in the fourth stanza. Certainly, Shapiro could have described the setting and action of the poem in purely visual terms the kind of thing less experienced writers are more likely to have done), but he gains deeper reader involvement by using four different types of sense impression.
Here's another example by Linda Pastan:
"Death's Blue-Eyed Girl"
When did the garden with its banked flowers
start to smell like a funeral chapel,
and the mild breeze passing our foreheads
to feel like the back of a nurse's hand
testing for fever? We used to be
immortal in our ignorance, sending
our kites up for the lightning, swimming
in unknown waters at night and naked.
Death was a kind of safety net to catch us
if we fell too far. Remember Elaine
standing in April, a child on one hip
for ballast, her head distracted with poems?
The magician waved and bowed, showed us his
empty sleeves and she was gone.
She begins with a visual images that in line 2 becomes olfactory, as well, and line 3 introduces a tactile image. Other images which combine the visual and the tactile follow creating strong sensory impressions which then contrast forcefully with the absence of imagery and of sense impressions in the concluding "she is gone," thereby underscoring the nature of death.
One further example of multiple images is by Marilyn Chin:
The Floral Apron
The woman wore a floral apron around her neck,
that woman from my mother's village
with a sharp cleaver in her hand.
She said, "What shall we cook tonight?
Perhaps these six tiny squid
lined up so perfectly on the block?"
She wiped her hand on the apron,
pierced the blade into the first.
There was no resistance,
no blood, only cartilage
soft as a child's nose. A last
iota of ink made us wince.
Suddenly, the aroma of ginger and scallion fogged our senses,
and we absolved her for that moment's barbarism.
Then, she, an elder of the tribe,
without formal headdress, without elegance,
designed to teach the younger
about the Asian plight.
And although we have traveled far
we would never forget that primal lesson
--on patience, courage, forbearance,
on how to love squid despite squid,
how to honor the village, the tribe,
that floral apron.
The first strophe is presented in visual terms (although "sharp" might be a foreshadowning of the tactile images to come); the second strophe--the dramatic moment of violence--is in both visual and tactile terms, while the transformation in the third strophe of the act of violence into something deeper and more insightful is presented in olfactory terms. Here, the changes in types of sense impression used reflect the progession of the action of the poem as well as engaging the reader more deeply than a poem using only one type of imagery.
Exercise II:
Exercise II actually comes in two parts; you may complete either part or both as you choose; Please note specific instructions for posting each part, however, as these differ from those for Exercise I.
Exercise II-A:
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Identify each of the types of images Keats uses in the first stanza of "To Autumn" and provide examples of each. No peeking at others' responses until you've posted. Post your responses in this thread.
Exercise II-B:
Write a poem which uses images involving at least three different types of sense impression. Post these responses in this thread, clearly marked as responses to "Exercise II."
Have fun.
* An exercise by Howard Mark
The same applies to poetry: the more of our senses the writer brings into play, the more deeply the reader's experience is going to be. For that reason, skillful poets will evoke several of our senses simultaneously rather than just relying on a single sense (the more common practice of still-learning writers). For example, look at the following poem by William Carlos Williams:
"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
Much of the poem is presented in strictly visual terms; however, in the last three lines, Williams evokes not only sight but also taste ("delicious" and "sweet") and touch ("cold") to communicate the joy the speaker has experienced eating the plums. These multiple sense impressions communicate more effectively than any single visual image precisely why the speaker really isn't sorry that he ate the plums, no matter what he's said; the cumulative effect of the multiple images is to override and contradict the speaker's attempt at apology.
Karl Shapiro also evokes multiple senses in "Haircut":
O wonderful nonsense of lotions of Lucky Tiger,
Of savory soaps and oils of bottle-bright green,
The gold of liqueurs, the unguents of Newark and Niger,
Powders and balms and waters washing me clean;
In mirrors of marble and silver I see us forever
Increasing, decreasing the puzzles of luminous spaces
As I turn, am revolved and am pumped in the air on a lever,
With the backs of my heads in chorus with all of my faces.
Scissors and comb are mowing my hair into neatness,
Now pruning my ears, now smoothing my neck like a plain;
In the harvest of hair and the chaff of powdery sweetness
My snow-covered slopes grow dark with the wooly rain.
And the little boy cries, for it hurts to sever the curl,
And we too are quietly bleating to part with our coat.
Does the barber want blood in a dish? I am weak as a girl,
I desire my pendants, the fatherly chin of a goat.
I desire the pants of a bear, the nap of a monkey
Which trousers of friction have blighted down to my skin.
I am bare as a tusk, as jacketed up as a flunkey,
With the chest of a moth-eaten camel growing within.
But in death we shall flourish, you summer-dark leaves of my head,
While the flesh of the jaw ebbs away from the shores of my teeth;
You shall cover my sockets and soften the boards of my bed
And lie on the flat of my temples as proud as a wreath.
The opening lines combine visual and olfactory images, evoking both the sight and smell of a barbershop, while "washing me clean" in line 4 of the first stanza introduces tactile imagery, as well; in consequence, the reader becomes quickly immersed in the physical sensations of the barbershop and, shortly, of the haircut itself. Visual and tactile imagery predominate, continuing to run through the entire poem, along with auditory imagery introduced in the fourth stanza. Certainly, Shapiro could have described the setting and action of the poem in purely visual terms the kind of thing less experienced writers are more likely to have done), but he gains deeper reader involvement by using four different types of sense impression.
Here's another example by Linda Pastan:
"Death's Blue-Eyed Girl"
When did the garden with its banked flowers
start to smell like a funeral chapel,
and the mild breeze passing our foreheads
to feel like the back of a nurse's hand
testing for fever? We used to be
immortal in our ignorance, sending
our kites up for the lightning, swimming
in unknown waters at night and naked.
Death was a kind of safety net to catch us
if we fell too far. Remember Elaine
standing in April, a child on one hip
for ballast, her head distracted with poems?
The magician waved and bowed, showed us his
empty sleeves and she was gone.
She begins with a visual images that in line 2 becomes olfactory, as well, and line 3 introduces a tactile image. Other images which combine the visual and the tactile follow creating strong sensory impressions which then contrast forcefully with the absence of imagery and of sense impressions in the concluding "she is gone," thereby underscoring the nature of death.
One further example of multiple images is by Marilyn Chin:
The Floral Apron
The woman wore a floral apron around her neck,
that woman from my mother's village
with a sharp cleaver in her hand.
She said, "What shall we cook tonight?
Perhaps these six tiny squid
lined up so perfectly on the block?"
She wiped her hand on the apron,
pierced the blade into the first.
There was no resistance,
no blood, only cartilage
soft as a child's nose. A last
iota of ink made us wince.
Suddenly, the aroma of ginger and scallion fogged our senses,
and we absolved her for that moment's barbarism.
Then, she, an elder of the tribe,
without formal headdress, without elegance,
designed to teach the younger
about the Asian plight.
And although we have traveled far
we would never forget that primal lesson
--on patience, courage, forbearance,
on how to love squid despite squid,
how to honor the village, the tribe,
that floral apron.
The first strophe is presented in visual terms (although "sharp" might be a foreshadowning of the tactile images to come); the second strophe--the dramatic moment of violence--is in both visual and tactile terms, while the transformation in the third strophe of the act of violence into something deeper and more insightful is presented in olfactory terms. Here, the changes in types of sense impression used reflect the progession of the action of the poem as well as engaging the reader more deeply than a poem using only one type of imagery.
Exercise II:
Exercise II actually comes in two parts; you may complete either part or both as you choose; Please note specific instructions for posting each part, however, as these differ from those for Exercise I.
Exercise II-A:
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Identify each of the types of images Keats uses in the first stanza of "To Autumn" and provide examples of each. No peeking at others' responses until you've posted. Post your responses in this thread.
Exercise II-B:
Write a poem which uses images involving at least three different types of sense impression. Post these responses in this thread, clearly marked as responses to "Exercise II."
Have fun.
* An exercise by Howard Mark
