Poieses Habitus V: Imagery
These installments explore poetry not merely as a literary form, but as a way of seeing, shaping, and inhabiting the world. Through close readings of poets such as Mary Oliver (with emphasis on her book “A Poetry Handbook”), Denise Levertov, Marianne Moore, and Robert Frost, among other 20th-Century Poets, the reader can expect reflections on sound, line, imagery, form, and freedom alongside personal meditations on writing habits, aesthetics, faith, and artistic formation. Blending literary criticism with spiritual and philosophical reflection, these short essays consider how poetry cultivates attentiveness to beauty, truth, and human experience while tracing the author’s own evolving understanding of poetic design and creative practice.
Imagery is perhaps the most essential tool in poetry. It cultivates not merely ideas in the mind of the reader but provides them with an experience. Through imagery, the reader can partake in the sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes of the image the poet is capturing. Oliver tells us that while poetry without imagery may maintain its wisdom, as a textbook or work of prose might, it would be pallid, devoid of the vividness or vivaciousness it can provide (92). Mark Strand’s “The Prediction” and Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips” both utilize imagery in a way that evokes a greater sense of the poem’s purpose and meaning.
Strand’s “The Prediction” uses rich metaphors and descriptive language. Strand begins his poem, “That night the moon drifted over the pond, / turning the water to milk...” (326) Already, we are faced with a metaphor of a deep white moon reflecting off a glassy pond. This implicit comparison between the white of milk and the moon’s reflected light is, as Oliver notes, both surprising and delightful (102). Furthermore, Strand’s description of “the blue trees,” further emphasizes the effect of moonlight on what should otherwise be green, or at least an array of browns, yellows, and oranges (326). His imagery is not literal, but like an artist seeing colors rather than working from a knowledge of colors, Strand paints the trees a blue that can only be recognized through the observation of trees under the light of the moon. The line, “... her own mouth / filling with cold air...” provides the reader with a sensation they can resonate with (Strand 326). The crispness and freshness of cold, rainy air is a specific sensation that parallels the implications of the line, “... strangers moving into her house.” (Strand 326) When I think of strangers moving into the place I have called home the whole of my life, I think of it neither as a bitterness or sweetness, nor something with any taste at all, but it is a crisp and sobering reality that seeps deep into my lungs, a source of my life. The closing lines cultivate a sense of coldness and finality, mirroring the prediction of the woman, “... and the wind rising / and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.” (Strand 326) Not only is this a vivid image of the moon passing through the window of the poet, but it is also a metaphor comparing the passage of time to the wind. It is dark. Time moves on as the wind blows through the trees. Indeed, it is the wind that blows the moon through the sky.
Clifton’s “homage to my hips” uses metaphor differently than Strand. Her poem begins “these hips are big hips / they need space to / move around in.” (Clifton 335) This is the beginning of what Oliver calls an extended metaphor, though I might be so bold as to call it a conceit (Oliver 103). But it raises the question, what are these hips a metaphor for? “they don’t fit into little / petty places. these hips / are free hips.” (Clifton 335) From these lines, we clearly see that this bodily imagery is serving as an abstract representation of empowerment. Clifton’s imagery and personification of her hips are a sensual representation of political defiance, “they do what they want to do. / these hips are mighty hips.” (Clifton 335) While Strand’s poem shows how imagery can be used to facilitate the experience of the vanity of life, Clifton shows how imagery can represent the self through personified metaphor.
Practicing with Imagery
The Ocean Played a Joke on Me (Original: Imagery)
The sun had vanquished beading moonlit mist,
Peeling it back like paper with a twist
Of the wrist to unveil the glassy sea,
Sundered by waves howling thunderously.
Cutting through the spray and foam like the cold
Water seeping down through the neck and fold
Of my wetsuit, my surfboard triumphed once
To glide across her crystal face—she grunts.
My feet, gripped firmly to the tacky wax,
Were thrown skyward. My beloved board cracks
Between the wave and shore, and now I fall,
Suspended briefly in the sea spray’s squall.
Silt-like salt cakes my face and numbing hands,
And soon the sea will share her gritty sands.
She'll fill my gasping mouth with acrid taste
Of brine and shrimp and kelp, all interlaced.
I await the thud of body on shore,
The final drumming beat preluding war.
Yet, when I kiss her shore and ever after,
I'll be listening to her boisterous laughter.
The Ocean Played a Joke on Me (Final Revision)
The sun had vanquished beading moonlit mist,
Peeling it back like paper with a twist
Of the wrist to unveil the glassy sea,
Sundered by waves howling thunderously.
Cleaving through the spray and foam, like the cold
Water seeping down through the neck and fold
Of my wetsuit, my surfboard triumphed once
To soar across her crystal face—she grunts.
My feet, gripped firmly to the tacky wax,
Were thrown skyward. My beloved board cracks
Between the shore and froth, and now I fall,
Suspended ever in the sea spray’s squall.
Silt-like salt cakes my numbing face and hands
And soon the sea will scrape her gritty sands
Across my face and fill my mouth with acrid taste
Of brine and shrimp and kelp, all interlaced.
I await the thud of body on shore,
The final drumming beat preluding war.
Yet, when I kiss her shore and ever after,
I'll be listening to her boisterous laughter.
Revision Narrative
Just as with several of the others, The Ocean Played a Joke on Me had already undergone numerous revisions before being shared initially. The challenge of revising something you are already happy with is that it feels as though you run the risk of unraveling what made it work in the first place. But just as poetry is like a fleeting moment captured in time, it is also fixed and stationary, thus I endeavored once more to reimagine this poem by finding weak diction and lines and reworking them, changing some metrical lines.
One initial critique received was that the poem did not offer much information about the surfboard itself. Two changes to the poem’s diction were made to improve this, “cutting” was replaced with “cleaving,” and “gliding” with “soaring.” While each of these words are, in many senses, synonymous, the implication of a board that cleaves through water and soars is more immediately and viscerally descriptive of the board than one that cuts and glides.
Another key reimagining that heightened the stakes of the captured moment was the change from “share” in “share her gritty sands” to “scrape her gritty sands.” This change adds tactile rawness and offers the ocean more agency to do as she wishes. Furthermore, to incite the feeling of the plummeting moment lasting forever, I changed “briefly” to “ever,” and I chose to add an extra iamb to the following stanza, breaking the iambic pentameter and ultimately reconceptualizing the poem’s energy. It also better contrasts the firm, end-stopping final stanza, which returns the reader to consistency and flow.
The Narthex (Original: Module 5, Imagery)
Dust,
oh, the haze that leaves her figure fettered,
graying sturdy tables, lamps, and wooden floors,
stirred up only to be caught by cobwebs
tying closed the windows and the doors.
Floorboards,
left complaining like an aged grove of pines,
echoing their discontent of chilling wind;
but there, the ponderosa cries forth joy
as the butterscotch takes to the wind.
Banisters,
swirling down from heights unmeasured, priest-like,
worn by tender care to lead us up the stairs—
swinging spiral cedar censers, lifting
incense heavenward to God, like prayers.
Walls,
leading on beyond the stairs and foyer—
papered diamonds, black and red, peeling away
from the corners of the walls and reaching
down the faded hall toward decay.
Windows,
breathing through the dark, a foreign luster
splinters through the shattered glass and woven webs,
scattering upon the whining floorboards
light arrayed, from deepest blues to reds.
Ghost,
haunting once the long-abandoned abbey,
it is I who stirs the dust up and bemoans
the floor. And when I leave, its memory
will be dust that settles in my bones.
The Narthex (Final Revision)
Dust,
oh, the haze that leaves her figure fettered,
graying sturdy tables, lamps, and wooden floors,
stirred up only to be caught by cobwebs
tying closed the windows and the doors.
Floorboards,
left complaining like an aged grove of pines,
echoing their discontent of chilling wind;
on them, abandoned scuffs from shoes still tell
of the wicked God did not rescind.
Banisters,
swirling down from heights unmeasured, priest-like,
worn by tender care to lead us up the stairs—
swinging spiral cedar censers, lifting
incense heavenward to God, like prayers.
Windows,
breathing through the dark, a liturgy of light splinters
through the shattered glass and woven webs,
scattering upon the whining floorboards
light arrayed, from deepest blues to reds.
Ghost,
haunting once the long-abandoned abbey,
it is I who stirs the dust up and bemoans
the floor. And when I leave, its requiem
will be the dust that settles in my bones.
Glory,
piercing through the ruin’s hush, a hymn floats
on each mote of dust that flies from forlorn floors;
I will sing their melody, pray right through
their liturgy, and plead God’s grace upon
the sinners Christ implores.
Revision Narrative
The Narthex was originally strong, and it was perhaps the most difficult to revise, as I loved it as it was. Nonetheless, I found it necessary to kill my darlings in pursuit of the one thing it lacked—something to tie everything together. As it was, it read no different than a dramatic grocery list, simply describing things I had seen in the abbey’s entryway. I chose to tie the poem together with a central theme of the sacraments of a liturgical church, as I did not wish to leave the descriptive imagery behind. Each object listed was then metaphorically tied to and identified with various church-related concepts—the dust is like a hymn, the floorboards mourn the lost who left the church, the bannisters point to prayer and intercession, the windows, as with the light of truth, illustrate liturgy, and the ghost is the one who speaks on behalf of the building like a prophet.
A final unifying stanza was added, bringing readers back to the former glory of what the abbey must have once been like. It conveys the imagery of the abbey's purpose by tying together the dust, floors, banisters, and light into a vision that is being acted upon by the ghost, who shares in their act of worship through song, prayer, liturgy, and lament.
Many sacrifices were made in pursuit of this unifying theme, including my favorite lines about the ponderosa floorboards. I believe I could tweak this poem forever and to death, but I believe these revisions have helped to add a unified nature to the poem that ultimately gives it more purpose than it had at the start.
Bibliography
Clifton, Lucille. "homage to my hips." The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove, 1st ed., Penguin Books, 2013, p. 335.
Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook. 1st ed., Mariner, 1994.
Strand, Mark. "The Prediction." The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove, 1st ed., Penguin Books, 2013, p. 326.