13.5 Word and Image
As we have just seen, Modern painters at the beginning of the 20th Century pulled viewers’ attention back from the visual subject to focus on Form. What might Modern poetry look like?
Well, what do we mean by Narrative? A telling of a story. Epics and Ballads tell stories. Lyric poems often embed fragments of poignant drama. The story is told by a voice that summarizes action, comments … and paints a scene in which the story plays out, i.e. Imagery.
Stories always evoke Imagery. When the narrator in “Araby” attends the bazaar, Joyce includes visual details that evoke the vast hall, submerged in shadow as the light go out. The story is infused with things to visualize. But do we notice the images? Most readers are caught up in the lad’s fate with Mangan’s sister and in that ironic voice shaping our reaction. Imagery generally recedes to a lesser level of our awareness.
But what if the subordination of the image could be reversed? As the Modern was taking off in visual art, poets in England and America were seeking a visual discipline for poetry that subordinated talk to image.
Pound’s Imagiste Prescription
In the March 1913 issue of Poetry Magazine, Ezra Pound composed an essay articulating a modern discipline for 20th Century poetry. Pound, who identified himself and some other select poets as Imagistes, called for a strictly disciplined verse which jettisoned wooly verbiage and stripped the poem down to its core: Image.
from Ezra Pound. (1913). a Few Don’ts by an Imagiste
An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. … It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits … which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.
It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works. …
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. … Go in fear of abstractions.
Pound’s notion of the Image is more complicated than simple visualization. But notice that his demand that poetry replace abstraction with concrete references that constellate feelings leads us toward the visual image.
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Hilda Doolittle, who always signed her poems with her initials, pioneered a commitment to the image. Her 1916 collection of poems, Sea Garden, adapted the principles of Haiku to a slightly longer and irregular form composed in short form Free Verse. It strips away Rhyme and Meter to grasp a moment of reflection on nature that follows Bashō’s example.
Sea Poppies. (1916).
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
Treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
Sea Rose. (1916).
Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.
Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?
Now, not all of H. D.’s compositions are this locked in on pure image. She drew on a deep knowledge of the Classical tradition to probe a new mythology which could visualize fresh possibilities for women. But her compressed Imagist compositions embody the Modern impulse in poetry.
The Doctor of the Image
William Carlos Williams was a physician in Rutherford, New Jersey. In his spare time, he composed verse. Influenced by Ezra Pound, he pared back his verbiage and his style to compose compressed images.
The Red Wheelbarrow (1923)
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This little poem bears a great deal of investigation. The opening line instructs our reflection. Then the poem falls back on pure Imagery, drawing on painterly concepts, primary red, white, glazing, and color contrast. The verbiage is stripped, spare, reliant on us to see and understand. Williams compresses his hero, Walt Whitman’s blank verse to concise couplets, the line breaks forcing us to decide between alternate rhythms.
Between Walls (1938)
Between Walls
the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle
This image of a waste space outside a hospital is lit by that elusive glint of green glass. But this complex “image” suggests sterility and decay outside of a place of birth, disease, and death. This is Dr. Williams’ world and he knows well those griefs, yet he allows the Image to speak, the glint of green glass intimating hope.
The World Narrowed to a Point. (1949).
Liquor and love
when the mind is dull
focus the wit
on a world of form
The eye awakes
perfumes are defined
inflections ride the quick ear
Liquor and love
rescue the cloudy sense
banish its despair
give it a home.
This verse illustrates the complexity that can be associated with Pound’s notion of an Image. It evokes a more complex personal drama than the last two: dullness and despair rescued by portals back to life. “Liquor and love”: not strictly an image, but a compressed shorthand for worlds of human experience. But the poetic voice does not hide in those distractions, but uses them to return to life with wit, sharpened senses—ear and smell—and a commitment to art’s core: Form.
Wallace Stevens: Ideas of Order
Like Dr. Williams, Wallace Stevens, a Vice President with the Hartford Insurance Company, wrote poetry in his spare time. And what poetry it was.
Anecdote of the Jar (October 1919)
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Remember Pound’s prescription for the Modern poet: avoid abstraction and constellate “an intellectual and emotional complex” in a concrete image. Stevens follows orders: he places a jar on a hill. Yet he also raises profound questions about the formula. What counts as an abstraction? What is Tennessee? A social and political construct. Does it encompass the hill and wilderness? And what is a wilderness, anyway?
What about that jar? It is an object, actually a work of art with a form that, placed on the hill takes “dominion everywhere.” How? It has an inside, an outside and a “port in the air.” The form of the artifact organizes the world, excluding the nature that surrounds it. Such is the power of human craft.
Wallace Stevens, from “The Man with the Blue Guitar” (1937)
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’
The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.’
And they said then, ‘But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.
Although his verse is far more than Imagism and in fact contains a great deal of abstraction, Stevens loved and was deeply influenced by Modern art. He was fascinated by the way contemporary artists such as Picasso provocatively manipulated the boundary between subjectivity and that thing we call reality. Our excerpt from a long poem poses the challenge faced by audiences who want art to take them beyond their reality yet become frightened and impatient when they lose touch with what they know.
“A tune beyond us, yet ourselves.” What do you think? Do you want art to give you originality while conforming to your comfort zone?
Vital Questions
Context
The literary context out of which les Imagistes emerged is far too vast and complex to dig into. We can, however, see its location within the moment of the Modern. It impatiently rejected what it saw as the excesses of the literary past and strictly pruned excesses to drive readers’ renewed awareness to a core experience.
Content
The essence of the Imagist discipline was an apparent rejection of cliché, abstraction, and flamboyance in favor of concrete imagery. Pound’s notion of the image is complex, but he does call for a concerted effort to compress story, thought, and feeling into sense experience: sight, ear, smell.
Form
The Formal watchword for Imagists was compression. Language was stripped down. Lines of Free Verse were shortened, fragmented, and shorn of Meter, Rhyme, and elaborate Figures of Speech. Of course, such restrictions could not last. And yet, over a century later, contemporary poetry in English continues to hew closer to the example of the Imagists than to the elaborate verse forms of the traditional past.
References
D. (1916). Sea poppies [Poem]. In Sea Gardens. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48187/sea-poppies
D. (1916). Sea Rose [Poem]. In Sea Gardens. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48188/sea-rose
Pound, E. (March, 1913). A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste [Article]. Poetry: a Magazine of Verse. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/58900/a-few-donts-by-an-imagiste
Stevens, W. (October 1919). Anecdote of the Jar [Poem]. In Poetry: a Magazine of Verse. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14575/anecdote-of-the-jar
Stevens, W. (1937). “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” Poetry, Vol. 50, No. 2 (May, 1937), pp. 61-69. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html.
Williams, W. C. (1923). The Red Wheelbarrow. In Spring and All. Dijon, FR: Maurice Darantière. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow
Williams, W. C. (1938). Between Walls [Poem]. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49849/between-walls
Williams, W. C. (November 1949). The World Narrowed to a Point [Poem]. In Poetry: a Magazine of Verse. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=22755
a style in the arts associated with the early 20th Century that emphasized formal design and the surface of the medium over any represented or narrated subject
the elements, patterns, techniques, styles and structures that comprise the composition without regard to subjects, meanings, or values
a telling of a story using some medium: prose, poetry, cinema, painting, etc.
an extended, mythic narrative celebrating the trials and triumphs of heroes exemplifying a culture’s treasured values and orienting its origins
a poem or song that tells a story. Traditionally, oral poetic genres compiled anonymously within folklore traditions for audiences with limited literary education
a relatively short poem which expresses the deep reflections and poignant emotions of the poetic voice. Origin: the portion of ancient Greek dramas sung to the accompaniment of a lyre (harp).
in poetry or narrative, verbal depictions of scenes or objects that evoke vivid sense experiences for the imagination
in poetry, a style that emphasizes concrete images that create imaginary sensations of vision or sound, usually in Free Verse, and avoids flamboyant language and abstract ideas
a poet or style of poetry that emphasizes concrete images that create imaginary sensations of vision or sound, usually in Free Verse, and avoids flamboyant language and abstract ideas
(in French, "vers libre") poetry that achieves verbal rhythms through repetitive, often parallel figures of speech, Tropes and Schemes. Free verse does not establish set patterns of meter or rhyme.
a disciplined pattern of sound units throughout the lines of a poem. In English verse, meter is found in the number and a pattern of stressed and un-stressed syllables in a line
a pattern of repeated sounds, usually the final syllable in the ends of verse lines