Poet's Tool Box Part 4: Imagery

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but poems of a thousand words are fairly rare, especially in this age of never enough time. However, a poet can paint a picture with just a few words, thereby saving a thousand.

I’m sure you have had a conversation in which minimal words were exchanged, yet because the conversation took place at a certain location and the words were exchanged in a particular manner, together with facial expressions, body language and outside circumstances, complex thoughts were communicated. Using imagery in poetry sets up the environment between poet and audience in which this same kind of complex communication can take place.

In a poem, you could write:

“I went to work happily”

… and thereby convey a basic idea, or you could write something like:

“My desk wore the blue sky
Like a café table wears an umbrella
I dared not wonder why
I was such a lucky fella”

… and thereby convey something of the actual feeling you are trying to communicate.

Of course my desk doesn’t really wear a blue sky. It’s a symbol. The blue sky is a fairly universal symbol for ‘no worries.’ Also the analog of the café table indicates a kind of holiday, or lunch hour, atmosphere, where I might feel at ease. I am saying I have no worries at my job and it doesn’t feel like work at all – more like sitting down to a nice lunch with an ale or two on a Saturday with friends. As the reader, your mind places you in the situation, visualizing a desk with the blue sky above and a waiter bearing appetizers and drinks due at any moment, or something like that.

“She was a book, fine
Leather bound with a gilt edged page
Her rigid spine
Straight with moral rage”

She’s not really a book, yet you get the picture of her, don’t you? I’ll bet you could describe her to me in detail. But of course they would be your details, not mine. In effect, using this metaphor of the book, I have made her part of your experience, subject to your frame of reference, and so she is really that much more a real person to both of us. Although I just made her up in my head, between us she is almost three dimensional. She could almost whack you with a steel ruler right now.

The well known tools of simile, metaphor and symbolism will serve you well as you construct your poetry. As a painter with a few well-chosen brush strokes defines a face, you, with a few well-chosen words will define an image, and from the mouth of that image will spring a thousand wayward and unpredictable words that will conjure a resonating image in the mind of your audience.

Say, was that a simile or a metaphor?