Poetry Exercise 1: Imagery
I love a good writing prompt, especially when I feel like writing a poem but don’t have anything in particular to say. For me, poetry is mainly about playing with language. I love words, and I like to stick them together in new and interesting ways. When I need something to write words about, a good prompt can get me unstuck.
But even more than prompts, poetry exercises have dramatically impacted my poetry by giving me opportunities to practice new skills and techniques. My writing changed and improved as I worked my way through both Steve Kowit’s In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop and Poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge.
I’m still learning and growing, and I’d like to invite you to learn and grow with me. Specifically, I plan to write a series of articles on poetry exercises, and I’m inviting you to do more than read them, but to actually practice the skills. These posts are interactive. I’m not an expert. These are skills on which I’m still working and developing. If you do end up doing any of these exercises AND if you publish any of the poems that result from your practice, I would love for you to tag me. That would be groovy as heck.
For this first exercise, we’re going to start with what I believe to be the most important literary device for poets: imagery.
Imagery refers to words and phrases that make your reader “see” and “hear.” It can appeal to other senses, as well, but these are the two on which we’re going to focus.
Think about it this way — when you read, you most likely picture what you’re reading, like a movie in your head (there are people who cannot picture things in their heads. I’m guessing the best imagery in the world would be wasted on them). And later, when you remember what you’ve read, you picture those images. You don’t picture the words on the page. You see that movie that played when you were reading. Poetry has rhythm, of course, so you may also remember the beat of the poem, especially if there was a particular refrain. When I think of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells,” I hear it. Not the whole poem, just the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells. But I also see them in my mind’s eye, swinging in some high tower.
