Evocative Poetry

[orneryhipster.livejournal.com]

Wow, tough crowd. So the entry has been deleted, and i hope this is within the lines of what's allowed in this community as i'm hoping for a discussion, but i requested poetry that has strong visual imagery, and got mocked as if i'd said, "In what respect, Charlie?" (okay, not that bad). Here's what i meant by specifying visually evocative poetry.

(Mod: i hope this doesn't come across as "looking for trouble" or being negatively provocative, but i was really shocked at the response to my post! This is probably my favorite lj community.)

In my readings of poetry, some is distinctly visually evocative, and other poems are less so. It's not that i *can't* use my imagination, it's that i've experienced some poems as being more expressly visual than others; that some simply don't ask the reader to imagine anything, or bring to mind without "working for it," colors or scenes or any other kind of image. I guess i should just illustrate my point with examples.

So, this is one of my favorites by Louise Gluck. I think this is strikingly, intentionally, and clearly visually evocative.



In every life, there’s a moment or two.
In every life, a room somewhere, by the sea or
in the mountains.

On the table, a dish of apricots. Pits in a white ashtray.

Like all images, these were the conditions of a pact:
on your cheek, tremor of sunlight,
my finger pressing your lips.
The walls blue-white; paint from the low bureau
flaking a little.

That room must still exist, on the fourth floor,
with a small balcony overlooking the ocean.
A square white room, the top sheet pulled back over
the edge of the bed.
It hasn’t dissolved back into nothing, into reality.
Through the open window, sea air, smelling of iodine.

Early morning: a man calling a small boy back from the water.
That small boy—he would be twenty now.

Around your face, rushes of damp hair, streaked with
auburn.
Muslin, flick of silver. Heavy jar filled with white peonies.

--Louise Gluck

(some formatting lost in this one)


This one by Mark Strand, is more emotionally evocative. For me, i don't have images come racing at me without trying when i read this one, as i do when i read the Louise Gluck piece.



I empty myself of the names of others.
I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside
the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family
album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

- Mark Strand

Same for this one. It's one that makes me feel more abstractly.



The first and least important mistake
was to take the train on Sunday, September 1st,
the last day of vacation for millions of Italians.
Though the train was packed,
we had thought to bring sandwiches.
We ate while everyone around us -- sitting, standing,
filling every possible ince of floor space --
went profoundly silent and watched
as if we were demonstrating a new technique
for brain surgery, one never tried before,
gone horribly wrong.

Not long after we finished, out of nowhere
came sandwiches, water, and fruit,
every last bit of it offered all around,
especially to those who had brought nothing with
them. Such kindness
and pleasure, and gratitude, except
on the part of the two Americans
who had eaten thier fill alone,
in silence, as if the world was empty
of everything but themselves.


Jim Moore

Comments

[tokio.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean about being visually evocative. I don't personally have a preference for poetry. I suppose what separates an interesting poem from an uninteresting poem is the use of the language, the use of rhythm, the mood created by these aspects, the story, and then the imagery, and then the mood created by the story and the imagery. I'm still not sure what separates poetry I love from poetry I find merely fascinating or good.

I like this line, "Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same." Other than that, these poems aren't for me.

[lightup-tea.livejournal.com]

I missed your original post, but we definitely have different ideas of what constitutes "visually evocative." I don't particularly find the Gluck poem to be visually evocative; I find its imagery pretty bland, almost stock! The rest aren't my imagistic cup of tea, either.

But this, an excerpt from a Galway Kinnell poem, I find visually evocative:

*

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go down, I have stood by
as you told the flower, don't grow old,
don't die. Little Maud,

I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,

*

I'd be happy to post the entire poem if anyone would like to read the rest.

Also, this bit from "Elm" I find especially evocative:

*

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

*

And this poem by Jack Gilbert, "Finding Something":

*

I say moon is horses in the tempered dark,
because horse is the closest I can get to it.
I sit on the terrace of this worn villa the king's
telegrapher built on the mountain that looks down
on a blue sea and the small white ferry
that crosses slowly to the next island each noon.
Michiko is dying in the house behind me,
the long windows open so I can hear
the faint sound she will make when she wants
watermelon to suck or so I can take her
to a bucket in the corner of the high-ceilinged room
which is the best we can do for a chamber pot.
She will lean against my leg as she sits
so as not to fall over in her weakness.
How strange and fine to get so near to it.
The arches of her feet are like voices
of children calling in the grove of lemon trees,
where my heart is as helpless as crushed birds.

*

The arches of her feet like voices...& not just voices, but children's voices in a grove of lemon trees... YES. Such a provocative image in a domestic space marked with chamber pots & the smell of someone dying.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly is a poet that consistently produces images I find "evocative" and intriguing. For example, the opening from "Dead Doe":

*

The doe lay dead on her back in a field of asters: no.

The doe lay dead on her back beside the school bus stop: yes.

Where we waited.
Her belly white as a cut pear. Where we waited: no: off

from where we waited: yes

at a distance: making a distance
we kept,
as we kept her dead run in sight, that we might see if she chose
to go skyward;
that we might run, too, turn tail
if she came near
and troubled our fear with presence: with ghostly blossoming:

*

I love how the movement of the images forces my own imagination to make the transformations. Much like this poem, one more, by Charles Simic: "Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk." This poem is difficult to imagine if you're trying too hard to make the pictures in your head:

*

Late at night our hands stop working.
They lie open with tracks of animals
Journeying across the fresh snow.
They need no one. Solitude surrounds them.

As they come closer, as they touch,
It is like two small streams
Which upon entering a wide river
Feel the pull of the distant sea.

The sea is a room far back in time
Lit by the headlights of a passing car.
A glass of milk glows on the table.
Only you can reach it for me now.

*

This is actually, I think, an inner look at the associative mental process conjured by an "evocative" image. The hands themselves seem to call up this memory of the glass of milk on the table, in the past, in a different life entirely, & they do so through the speaker's associative thinking: streams --> river --> distant sea --> room far back in time, where the milk sits illuminated by passing headlights.

So, maybe your question was too vague? I dunno. Hope you liked some of these pieces, anyway.

[orneryhipster.livejournal.com]

I liked those! Thank you for sharing.

Also, the second two poems i posted were ones i found to be *not* visually evocative (but in other ways). The argument that was made to my original post was that every poem was by it's very nature visually evocative, and i would know that if i'd ever read any poems or used my imagination (sheesh!).

[bloodrebel333.livejournal.com]

*saves the poems*