# What is imagery and why do we care?



## Isis (Aug 31, 2012)

I wrote this article as the introduction of a guide to imagery. It's aimed at youngish writers, but I hope that more experienced writers can get something out of it as well. I'd like to know the following (take your pick, I have lots of questions): is this clear? Did this teach you something about poetry? Is there anything that I left out, that seems irrelevant, or that seems not suitable for an audience of writers looking to hone their craft? Poets in the audience, do you disagree with anything? EDIT: Technical stuff is helpful too. I definitely have more to learn about things like pacing, sentence structure, and logic.

(If you're curious, you can look at the whole thing on my WF blog, but for now I'm just looking for feedback on the beginning)

*What is imagery, and why do we care? *

Imagery, at its best, isn’t just the background of a poem or a pretty veneer that draws attention from the ‘point’ the poet is trying to made – it can become the fabric of the poem, conveying the essential emotions and ideas. Imagery has the power to evoke and to illustrate, bringing out the response of the readers rather than pounding the expected response into their skulls.

Imagery is language that addresses the senses. It is a very flexible device and doesn’t have a structural formula, like the simile does; rather, anything that conveys sensory detail and shows, rather than tells, can be an image. An image can be a word, a phrase, or an entire poem. Imagery deals in the concrete, rather than the abstract.

Imagery in all its forms is one of the main vehicles of both emotion and idea in poetry. You have all heard the advice “show, don’t tell” at this point (I hope). That’s imagery. Learning to use it well will take you beyond the simple adage of “show, don’t tell”, but we’ll get more into that later. In poetry, as in most forms of writing, readers don’t respond to opinions without facts, or emotions named with a word. Poetry is not the paraphrase, the “meaning” that you summarize in a sentence for an homework assignment. Poetry is an experience of something – a moment in time, a thought on a subject, the life of an object, a song, a howl, a history. Imagery usually creates experience, and it allows the reader to become a part of that experience. When a poem opens the door with imagery, it gives you something to respond to with your own experience; when a poem tells you what its about without using imagery or figurative language, it shuts you out.

One way that poems can shut a reader out is with abstractions that are not integrated into the poem. Abstractions are nouns that name a general idea, concept or emotion. Love, soul, hate, beauty, happiness, sadness, joy, fury, truth, nature, pain are all abstractions. They are essential words for communicating when we talk to each other, but they tend to make poetry general, vague, and difficult to relate to. Abstractions take a whole host of experiences that are related in feeling but wildly different in every other way and bundle them into a single word or phrase. This makes them strikingly poor communicators when we don’t know the speaker – and so often poor communicators in poetry.

Everyone has a different idea of what these abstract concepts describe in the real world. This is why the concrete often communicates far better than the abstract in poetry – your idea of what love, joy, hate, etc. are way different from my idea, or the idea of a Greek man 2,800 years ago. Say you want to write a poem about being happy. When I think of happiness I’m in my studio, blasting music your parents probably like and becoming one with the rich smell of oil paints. You might imagine that blue day in Santa Cruz, or the first snowfall of the year, or a night in the kitchen talking with friends. I don’t know how you, the reader, will respond to me stating “I was happy” in a poem. Stating the name of the feeling won’t describe how or why that feeling came about, or why it should matter. The reader isn’t going to care about my happiness – she can’t experience it. You can’t make readers feel something by naming the feeling, but you can make them feel by creating the opportunity for them to experience the thing for themselves.

Here’s what Robert Wallace, author of “Writing Poetry”, has to say about it: 


> Emotions, in themselves, are not subject matter. Being in love, or sad, or lonely, or feeling good because it is spring, are common experiences. Poets that merely say these things, state these emotions directly, are unlikely to be very interesting. We may respect such statements, but we can’t be moved by them.
> 
> The circumstances of the emotion, the scene or events out of which it comes, however, are the subject matter. Don’t tell the emotion. Tell the causes of it, the circumstances. Presented vividly, they will not only convince us of its truth but will also make us dramatically feel it.



Abstractions have a place in poetry. Poetry can tackle big ideas, general concepts, and the complex realms of human emotion. But both big ideas and the abstractions that name them are better accompanied in poetry by imagery or figurative language of some kind. Some poets that created abstract ideas did so through concrete language, combining particulars so that they merge into the general. Others use particulars to convey things that are usually prosaic and abstract, such as philosophical or scientific concepts. The discussion of imagery vs. abstraction is one with lots of historical and philosophical background that I’m not up on. Poets from different eras struck varying balances between the two in their work – something that you’ll observe as you read poetry from the last five centuries. Reading poetry will help you figure out your own balance between imagery and abstraction, as will thinking about the different types of imagery that you can use in your poetry.


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## ScrapNook (Aug 31, 2012)

I am new and have no formal education on writing.  I think the only writing classes I had were in high school and they were taught by the soccer coach.  And when I say , taught by the soccer coach, I mean he was hired as a soccer coach and he did the English writing class on the side.  

So, for me, I did learn alot from this and found it interesting.  I realized as I read this that imagery is what I look for in anything I read, only I didn't realize it.  I always described a writing as romantic if I was engaged in it.  But I guess, in reality, it was the imagery that was romancing me through the piece.  In Beethoven's Romance of the Violin Orchestra No. 2, the violin leads me through the piece.  It doesn't push me to the end but rather attracts me to it.  I guess it is the imagery that moves me throughout a piece and I didn't even know that.  Thank you for enlightening me.


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## ScrapNook (Aug 31, 2012)

I am new and have no formal education on writing. I think the only writing classes I had were in high school and they were taught by the soccer coach. And when I say , taught by the soccer coach, I mean he was hired as a soccer coach and he did the English writing class on the side. 

So, for me, I did learn alot from this and found it interesting. I realized as I read this that imagery is what I look for in anything I read, only I didn't realize it. I always described a writing as romantic if I was engaged in it. But I guess, in reality, it was the imagery that was romancing me through the piece. In Beethoven's Romance of the Violin Orchestra No. 2, the violin leads me through the piece. It doesn't push me to the end but rather attracts me to it. I guess it is the imagery that moves me throughout a piece and I didn't even know that. Thank you for enlightening me.


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## Cran (Aug 31, 2012)

> is this clear?


 Yes, but I think it would be clearer if you broke up those compound paragraphs. 



> Did this teach you something about poetry?


Imagery is the only thing I know anything about in poetry or elsewhere. I applaud every effort to promote and improve its use. 



> Is there  anything that I *left out*, that* seems irrelevant*, or that seems not  suitable for an audience of writers looking to hone their craft?


 Apart from this statement:


> Learning to use it well will take you beyond the simple adage of “show, don’t tell”, but we’ll get more into that later.


- only that although the information and explanations are there, it lacks  illustrative examples*, and therefore comes across as word-heavy -  something I'd expect in a sub-thesis or minor thesis (depending on which  education system we're in) rather than a presentation or lecture.  Plenty of bones, but very little flesh.

ETA:*_the example that is there, buried in par 5, is a flash montage of variable connections - it would have been better to more deeply immerse in one or two images._



> Poets  in the audience, do you disagree with anything?


I disagree with lots of things, but nothing I can point to in your piece, other than my comments above.


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## Isis (Aug 31, 2012)

Thank you both for the feedback!



ScrapNook said:


> I realized as I read this that imagery is what I look for in anything I read, only I didn't realize it.  I always described a writing as romantic if I was engaged in it.  But I guess, in reality, it was the imagery that was romancing me through the piece.  In Beethoven's Romance of the Violin Orchestra No. 2, the violin leads me through the piece.  It doesn't push me to the end but rather attracts me to it.  I guess it is the imagery that moves me throughout a piece and I didn't even know that.  Thank you for enlightening me.


Thank you - I'm glad you got something out of it! And I like your analogy with the violin, I think that's a great way to illustrate what a lot of writers go for when using imagery in their work. I might borrow if from you for critiques if you don't mind. 



			
				Cran said:
			
		

> Although the information and explanations are there, it lacks illustrative examples, and therefore comes across as word-heavy - something I'd expect in a sub-thesis or minor thesis (depending on which education system we're in) rather than a presentation or lecture. Plenty of bones, but very little flesh.


 Are there any places that seem particularly suited for an example? The long version of the article has lots of examples - perhaps I should jump right in and just let the poems, and some brief discussion of them, do the heavy lifting.


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## ScrapNook (Aug 31, 2012)

I don't mind at all.


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## Cran (Aug 31, 2012)

Isis said:


> Are there any places that seem particularly suited for an example?


The first obvious place to me is -


> Imagery is language that addresses the senses.


 - yes! now, show me - address my senses.



> The long version of the article has lots of examples - perhaps I should jump right in and just let the poems, and some brief discussion of them, do the heavy lifting.


That's one way. Which is more important to you? The poems, or the message? If it's the message, then it might be better to hone in on illustrative excerpts; better yet, to create some. If the poems, then no more than one or two at a time - over-feeding leads to indigestion.


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