Poems Are Imagery
The art of good poetry is the art of using images
As I said in my previous two articles, poetry writing is a complex topic. However, we’ll start with this: a good poem needs to be concise, specific, and concrete. Today, we’ll discuss concreteness.
Concreteness and Imagery
As was discussed under specificity, being vague is not helpful for a poem. However, there are really two things at stake when we say “Don’t be vague.” One is the being too general. The other is being too abstract.
Consider this example poem again:
Love/Hate
I loved you with an expansive love,
I gave you all my heart and all my soul,
But you threw me away for another,
And now I will hate you ’til Jesus calls his roll.
Notice that when you read it, you don’t get but one mental image: Jesus standing around reading names off a scroll or out of a book. Also notice that this image is also not one connected in any way to the subject of the poem, which is a lover (?) who has rejected his/her/their beloved.
It is worthwhile to note here that we have no idea if the speaker of the poem is male or female or if the love in question is romantic or platonic. Perhaps we don’t need to know those things, but it is all part of this poem’s vagueness.
