37. Poetry-ways of preserving imagery.

Poetry is work of fiction that expresses human’s feelings directly. Poetry lets a man speak in his own voice, but it stresses feeling as much as thought in its attempt to recreate for the reader the whole complex of events and reaction and his response to living. This recreation of immediate experience is what Archibald McLeish meant when he wrote that a poem should not mean but be. He stresses the immediacy of the poet’s experiences. Poetry starts with concrete observation. We speak about poetry as transformation of concrete observation into emotional experience.

Poetry enables the reader to react to the poet’s personal attitude to life. It enables the poet to deal with concrete facts, he doesn’t have to invent anything, coz his observations supply facts, which create associations that are caused by the poet’s personal experience. We feel the voice of the poet in any kind of verse. Sometimes the poet may change his voice depending on what he’s going to sing. The tone voices take the part of the experience every poem tries to recreate.

Poetry is more ancient than literary prose. Poetry was said & sang at religious festivals. The full impact of the poem can be appreciated only when it’s read with the ear as well as with the eye. It places special demands on the reader’s attention & perception.

Imagery – words & sentences that produce clear vivid mental pictures.

It’s the poet’s business to transform abstract ideas, as well as observations & events, into concrete experience, which can be apprehended as concrete experience through all our senses.

Twilight and evening bell

And after that the dark. These two lines acquire a symbolic meaning – the age of the person, then death).

Symbolism makes poetry. An image evokes a picture or the response of 1 of the other senses. It’s a most straightforward description. It can be purely visual, or a mixture btw some sound perception & visual perception.

Not all the visual imagery yields its meaning readily. Sometimes it takes careful reading to understand what the poet is writing about. Sometimes we don’t think of imagery, but of devices like simile, metaphor, allusion. But for a tr-or it’s important, understand the structure of the image & mechanisms that underlie its construction. Similes & metaphors are based upon comparison. Personification (often used) gives personality & concreteness to such abstract notions as justice, wisdom…

In poetry images often come in compact groups. The author wants to enable the reader to discover the meaning of this/that image. And sometimes images come so close one to another that there is hardly time to understand one before the next is revealed. Images almost merge shading meaning on each other. Every image accumulates the weight of feeling. Images are made to express complex and abstract that strong emotions in terms of concrete experience.

Alfred Tennison "Crossing the Bar" .

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea.

But such a tide is moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark.

For though from out the bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.