IMAGE

1. IMAGE • Think of an image as a picture or a sculpture, something concrete and representational within a work of art. • Literal images appeal to our sense of realistic perception, like a nineteenth-century landscape painting that looks "just like a photograph.“ • There are also figurative images that appeal to our imagination, like a twentieth-century modernist portrait that looks only vaguely like a person but that implies a certain mood.

2. Even mundane objects can take on a special meaning when rendered as a poetic image. Consider: A red balloon, bobbing uncertainlyOn a string tied to the wristOf a weary boyBreaks free, and floats hopefully skywardFading rapidly into a tiny blood spot

3. Kids lose balloons, and it’s not tragic—unless you’re the kid! • The hopefulness of the balloon, free at last, contrasts with the implied loss that the boy must feel. • He is tired, perhaps worn out from a fair. • Tragedy on a small scale (it’s a tiny blood spot, not a bloodbath) smarts nevertheless, and can happen quickly. • All of these ideas are packed into a single, relatively simple image.

4. What kind of poetic imagery might evolve around the following scenarios? • A couple, kissing for the first time (described by an outsider) • A city seen from an airplane • A feather floating on a pond

5. IRONY • As a figure of speech, irony refers to a difference between the way something appears and what is actually true. • Part of what makes poetry interesting is its indirectness, its refusal to state something simply as "the way it is.“ • Irony allows us to say something but to mean something else, whether we are being sarcastic, exaggerating, or understating.

6. A woman might say to her husband ironically, "I never know what you're going to say," when in fact she always knows what he will say. • This is sarcasm, which is one way to achieve irony. • Irony is generally more restrained than sarcasm, even though the effect might be the same.

7. The woman of our example might simply say, "Interesting," when her husband says something that really isn't interesting. • She might not be using sarcasm in this case, and she might not even be aware that she is being ironic. • A listener who finds the husband dull would probably understand the irony though. • The key to irony is often the tone, which is sometimes harder to detect in poetry than in speech.

8. Irony is easier to communicate in speech than in writing. • Consider the following circumstance: A child is playing violin and his aunt says, "He is obviously not ready for the youth orchestra.“ • We don't know whether the aunt is speaking ironically or not; if the child is playing poorly, then the tone is straight. • If the child is playing perfectly, then the tone is ironic. • Much depends on the way the aunt pronounces "obviously."

9. Let's assume all of the following statements are meant to be read ironically. • You are a poet: You want to communicate irony, but you don't want to overdo it, because heavy-handed irony isn't much fun to read. • How much context would you have to add in order to ensure that the tone is ironic but that your touch is light?

10. Example:His house was clean and orderly.

11. One might add… Just as he had always hoped,His house was clean and orderly;No dust settled on picturesAnd there was no furniture to clutter the living room.The refrigerator had no moldering vegetablesAnd the tub had no trace of her hairThat used to clump and cluster in the drain.The only thing out of placeWas a piece of paper taped clumsily to the doorIn sloppy handwriting: "ALL YOURS."

12. Explain the situation(s) that would make the following lines ironic. • He loved the power of a speeding car. • Her mother waved enthusiastically from the doorway. • He closed the door softly behind him.

13. SIMILE • Have you ever noticed how many times your friends say, "It's like . . ." or "I'm like . . . "? • They aren't always creating similes, but they are attempting to simulate something (often a conversation). • The word like signifies a direct comparison between two things that are alike in a certain way.

14. Where are the similes in “Greater Than That” by Brenda Joyce Garfacci? Peering through the drapeOf my synthetic cell,How I long to escapeThis manufactured hell.Like a bruised, little birdToo confused to fly, I’m trapped, in a word,So confined am I.A captive, collared lionAlone in its pen,I’m pacin’ and dyin’In a manmade den.For an eagle was not meantTo be locked in a cage,Its life to be spentLike a picture on a page.And when a mighty lion,In truth, is but a cat, It will spend its time tryin’To be greater than that.

15. METAPHOR • Closely related to similes, metaphors immediately identify one object or idea with another, in one or more aspects. • Like a simile, a metaphor expands the sense and clarifies the meaning of something. • Unlike a simile, a metaphor is a direct comparison stating that one thing IS something else, not just that it is LIKE it.

16. Let’s make some metaphors. • Love is… • Hunger is… • Pain is… • Happiness is… • Sleep is… • Desire is…

17. SYMBOL • A symbol works two ways: It is something itself, and it also suggests something deeper. • It is crucial to distinguish a symbol from a metaphor: Metaphors are comparisons between two seemingly dissimilar things; symbols associate two things, but their meaning is both literal and figurative.

18. A metaphor might read, "His life was an oak tree that had just lost its leaves"; a symbol might be the oak tree itself, which would evoke the cycle of death and rebirth through the loss and growth of leaves. • Some symbols have widespread, commonly accepted values that most readers should recognize: Apple pie suggests innocence or homespun values; ravens signify death; fruit is associated with sensuality.

19. Yet none of these associations is absolute, and all of them are really determined by individual cultures and time (would a Chinese reader recognize that apple pie suggests innocence?). • No symbols have absolute meanings, and, by their nature, we cannot read them at face value. • Rather than beginning an inquiry into symbols by asking what they mean, it is better to begin by asking what they could mean, or what they have meant.

20. What are the symbolic possibilities of the following things? • A blind man • A dove • A river • The stars • A play • A computer screen • Lightning • A mountain

21. REVIEW • Image • Irony • Simile • Metaphor • Symbol

22. IMAGE • A picture in our mind created by words

23. IRONY • a difference between the way something appears and what is actually true

24. SIMILE • The word like (or as) signifies a direct comparison between two things that are alike in a certain way.

25. METAPHOR • a direct comparison stating that one thing IS something else, not just that it is LIKE it

26. SYMBOL • It is something itself, and it also suggests something deeper.

27. METER • Meter is the rhythm established by a poem, and it is usually dependent not only on the number of syllables in a line but also on the way those syllables are accented. • This rhythm is often described as a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

28. The rhythmic unit is often described as a foot; patterns of feet can be identified and labeled. • A foot may be iambic, which follows a pattern of unstressed/stressed syllables. • For example, read aloud: "The DOG went WALKing DOWN the ROAD and BARKED.“ • Because there are five iambs, or feet, this line follows the conventions of iambic pentameter (pent = five), the common form in Shakespeare's time. • Stressed syllables are conventionally labeled with a "/" mark and unstressed syllables with a "U" mark.

29. U / U / U / U / U / But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? U / U / U / U / U / And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. U / U / U / U / U / It is my lady, O, it is my love!

30. RHYME • The basic definition of rhyme is two words that sound alike. • The vowel sound of two words is the same, but the initial consonant sound is different. • Rhyme is perhaps the most recognizable convention of poetry, but its function is often overlooked. • Rhyme helps to unify a poem; it also repeats a sound that links one concept to another, thus helping to determine the structure of a poem.

31. Rhyme can indicate a poetic theme or the willingness to structure a subject that seems otherwise chaotic. • Rhyme works closely with meter in this regard. • There are varieties of rhyme: internal rhyme functions within a line of poetry, for example, while the more common end rhyme occurs at the end of the line and at the end of some other line, usually within the same stanza if not in subsequent lines.

32. There are true rhymes (bear, care) and slant rhymes (lying, mine). • There are also a number of predetermined rhyme schemes associated with different forms of poetry. • Once you have identified a rhyme scheme, examine it closely to determine (1) how rigid it is, (2) how closely it conforms to a predetermined rhyme scheme (such as a iambic pentameter), and especially (3) what function it serves.

33. My Papa’s Waltzby Theodore Roethke • - lines 2 and 4 - "dizzy” and “easy" • These are slant rhymes—that is, inexact rhymes—rather than the true rhymes that dominate the rest of the poem, except for lines 5 and 7. The early stanzas of the poem feel looser as a result. The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

34. My Papa’s Waltzby Theodore Roethke • - lines 5 and 7 - "pans”, “countenance" • Like lines 2 and 4, the last words of these lines constitute the only slant rhymes in the poem. As with dizzy and easy, the words do rhyme, but in order to hear the rhyme, the ear has to bend the sounds slightly. The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

35. My Papa’s Waltzby Theodore Roethke • - lines 14 and 16 - "shirt”, “dirt" • The second half of the poem is generally tougher, with short, hard-sounding words and true end rhyme. • There are no slant rhymes here; the structure is less relaxed, which leaves the reader feeling tense and uneasy. The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

36. TONE • The tone of a poem is roughly equivalent to the mood it creates in the reader. • Think of an actor reading a line such as "I could kill you.“ • He can read it in a few different ways: If he thinks the proper tone is murderous anger, he might scream the line and cause the veins to bulge in his neck. • He might assume the tone of cool power and murmur the line in a low, even voice. • Perhaps he does not mean the words at all and laughs as he says them.

37. Much depends on interpretation, of course, but the play will give the actor clues about the tone just as a poem gives its readers clues about how to feel about it. • The tone may be based on a number of other conventions that the poem uses, such as meter or repetition.

38. If you find a poem exhilarating, maybe it's because the meter mimics galloping. • If you find a poem depressing, that may be because it contains shadowy imagery. • Tone is not in any way divorced from the other elements of poetry; it is directly dependent on them.

39. I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of its mouth. He didn’t fight.He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen — the frightening gills,fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly — I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. • line 5 - "He didn’t fight" • Bishop’s poem begins with a tone of aloofness, as if the speaker is saying, “I caught a fish. No big deal.” The lines are short and clipped. Later, as the speaker gradually becomes more descriptive, the tone shifts to accommodate longer, more specific words and looser, more ornamental lines.

40. I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of its mouth. He didn’t fight.He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen — the frightening gills,fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly — I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. • - lines 23/24 - "the terrible oxygen / —the frightening gills" • The speaker’s language becomes more descriptive as the poem progresses and her tone less detached. Her free use of strong adjectives like terrible and frightening contributes to our awareness of this shift.

41. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. — It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip — if you could call it a lip — grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels — until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!And I let the fish go. • - line 75 - "was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!" • The shifts in tone that occur when the speaker looks into the fish’s eyes and observes the hooks in its mouth culminate in this almost ecstatic revelation of beauty. The repetition of “rainbow” and the exclamation point that follows emphasize the speaker’s exultation and indicate the extent of her transformation.

42. REVIEW • Meter • Rhyme • Tone

43. METER • the rhythm established by a poem and described as a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

44. RHYME • two words that sound alike and tend to unify and give structure to a poem

45. TONE • the mood a poem creates in the reader