CHAPTER EIGHT

Go to the Image

“The better the poem, the harder it is to talk about.” - Matthew Zapruder

In graduate school, as semester workshop assignments were announced, we all speculated about how well our work was received based on which writer’s workshop to which we were assigned. If we were assigned the visiting writer with national awards and recent, notable publications, it was assured we were doing well. During the third semester, many of us were disappointed when we didn’t get to study with the workshop’s Wunderkind, but we were each offered a private workshop with him.

The gray winter afternoon before my workshop, I was so nervous, I could barely utter anything about the five paltry poems I’d written for the workshop. Likely, they were set in the Appalachian mountains, and vaguely pastoral. I watched as [ ____ ]  twisted his arms and legs into knots while describing and narrating my poems, but suddenly he stopped and asked, “Do you go to where your poems are?”

Not understanding what he was asking, I answered, “Yes, I’ve been there.”

“No,” he insisted earnestly. “I mean do you go there? There, where the creek is winding behind the church with the dingy asbestos shingles. The road has the same cursive bends of the creek and no one bothered to paint a centerline.”

For a second, I thought he’s been to the Primitive Baptist Church in Flag Pond, Virginia that I was writing about because he’d described it so perfectly, but I noticed that his eyes were closed as he was talking. Then he pushed his palms together, weaving the air, exactly like the creek he was describing. He was imagining it and thus describing it, not describing it because he’d been there. The cart can go before the horse in poetry. It does not matter if the place, person, or thing is real or not, and certainly not if the writer has firsthand knowledge or experience of it. Rather, what counts is how richly the writer can describe the imagery. You have to go to where you are writing.

In The Art of Description by Mark Doty he writes that “information is the driest and least revealing of essential twenty-first century words, and the data that senses offer every waking moment is anything but that.” Indeed, living in the information age brings the difficult task of sorting what is information, what is detail, and what is description. Often, newer writers mistake detail, a kind of information for description, but description should be more of an experience. Don’t mistake detail for description, they are sisters, not twins.

Adjectives and Verbs

Adjectives are often considered the workhorses of descriptions because adjectives modify nouns and explain how; yet, it is verbs that bring action and experience. Take a look at the poem below by NAR contributor Diana Babineau. In the first stanza alone: “installed,” “gave,” “curling,” “pulled,” and “straightening” are the verbs, while “dark,” “brown,” “soft,” and “wood” are the adjectives. Not only do the verbs outnumber the adjectives, but the adjectives are a bit more prosaic than the verbs. Verbs show, too. As you read Babineau’s poem, notice the ratio of verbs to adjectives, as well as any sensory language that refers to touch, taste, sight, sound, smell. How many verbs can you feel yourself doing or being done to you?

The Brush by Diana Babineau

        The shooting stars in your black hair

        in bright formation

        are flocking where,

        so straight, so soon?

  –Elizabeth Bishop

Before my dad installed wood floors,

my mother’s room

had carpet, dark brown threads

that gave way to

my toes, curling themselves in soft plush

as she pulled and pulled at my hair, straightening it all

into tight formation. I focused on

the television:

Tom and Jerry trying to snap

a paw or sever

a tail. I smiled at their failures, their mis-

channeled love. (What would one be

without the other?) Everything

was brushed into

manageable decency and I wondered

about these daily

rituals of hurt. My scalp adjusted,

grew tougher, and I thought all pain must dull

eventually. When the wood was cut

to size, polished

smooth, hammered into neat

rows, my toes

no longer curled into softness. I’d grown

strong, I thought. But the bright blond boards

revealed the mess–unruly black

strands to be swept

aside. I was taught to collect these pieces,

then discard. I learned

we leave parts of ourselves everywhere, though

mostly at the feet of our loved ones.

Sensory Language

In Babineau’s poem, the speaker of this poem recalls a painful childhood ritual that causes pain to her body. Just as the infant first processes the world through the body (hunger, warmth, satiety, noise) the writer, too, constructs their image primarily through senses. A kind of shortcut to description is using sensory language, which draws upon experience gathered from the five senses: touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. Constructing sensory descriptions can be a beautiful union of adjective and verb combinations. An easy example of this is to describe a beloved kitchen or family dish. For example, my grandmother’s cornbread had a rich buttery smell, simultaneously grainy and greasy, the batter sizzled as she poured it into the hot iron skillet.  

In The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, the author, Julia Cameron asserts, “Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail. Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention onto details (for instance, the excruciatingly beautiful curve of a lost lover’s neck). Art may seem to involve broad strokes, grand scheme, great plans. But it is the attention to detail that stays with us; the singular image is what haunts us and becomes art.” In vernacular, what Cameron is saying is that the devil is in the description. Images, sensory language, and active verbs are description.

There is also a mixing of the senses known as synesthesia (not to be confused with the neurological condition of synesthesia), but the literary device of synesthesia, which is an intermingling or swapping of different senses at once. The mixture of senses creates intrigue and new combinations of language (check link for examples).

Exercise 1: Go to the Image

For this exercise, you can either pick a poem you’d like to revise or start with an image you recall. In the example I gave earlier, I was trying to recall the Primitive Baptist Church in Flag Pond, Virginia. Decide on your image in the revision or new work. First, recall the image and take as many notes about it as you can about the image. If you don’t have enough after recollection, use a photo or do research online, such as an image search; Google street view comes in hand if your image is a property or place. However, remember you are describing, so imagine, don’t report.  

Let language, not the idea, guide your work. Select active and/or unexpected verbs to help describe the image. The weirdness and joy in poetry come when the reader is surprised, whether through an unexpected line break or with an odd twist of image. When a noun is modified by something unexpected like a briney afternoon or soft cursing from the kitchen, the combination adds interest to the image, but also precision of experience. Go to the image and let the language lead the way.

Exercise 2: Sensory List

Pick an object, like a lemon or a glass of water, or sit under a tree and try to notice something from each category: touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. Below are a few examples.  

• touch: the numbness in your fingers on a cold walk
• taste: something too sweet or too salty
• sight: the thinness of a shadow
• sound: the squeaky brakes of the car in front of you
• smell: the smell of acrid greens cooking

Start the poem with the observation of the sensation. Invent what caused the sensation and wherever the poem goes, let it, but remember a detail is not description. A detail tells; it’s information. Whereas a description shows or attempts to mimic an experience. Get your reader to have the same experience as your speaker.

Exercice 3: Verbs

Write a poem that begins with a verb and ends with either a verb or an action. While writing this poem, think about verbs as showing words.