And with Billy Collins in his poem "Osso Bucco," we get the sense that we are looking closer and closer and closer at the meat on his (on our!) plate. These poems describe a pair of pants, a Barbie doll, and a garlic clove the way we would see them if we were holding them in our hands. And in "Kinky," Denise Duhamel attends to the small details of a Barbie doll-"the small opening under her chin" while Robert Evory in "Garlic" brings our eye to the meeting of the delicate paper of a garlic clove and a fingernail. In the poem "Hat Angel," Michael Burkard recreates the sound that the train makes in the last two lines through his use of diction and line breaks. Notice not only how imagistic these examples are, but how specific the details are, as well. His wide jaw line jostlesĭestined to gaze from the back window of cars. (Georg Trakl, from “The Sun,” translated by Robert Bly and James Wright)īarbie squeezes the small opening under her chin The fisherman travels smoothly in his blue skiff. The fish rises with a red body in the green pond. It asks you to create with an attention to the concrete, physical world rather than telling with abstract words which produce thoughts about the speaker's experience or ideas instead of feelings in the reader's body through the five senses. The adage "Show don’t tell" is shorthand for the most important tenet of creative writing. And you do this with either general, abstract words that make a reader think, or you do this with specific, concrete words that allow a reader to see. In this analogy, the language of your poem can either bark generally or lead specifically. Timmy’s family couldn’t do anything to help him until Lassie did more than bark Lassie had to show them exactly what was wrong by leading them directly to Timmy so they could see precisely what the matter was. Timmy was curious and always getting into trouble. The phrase reminds me of the television show Lassie in which eleven-year-old Timmy’s collie named Lassie would run to tell Timmy’s family whenever Timmy was in trouble and needed rescuing. How many of you have heard this phrase before? Maybe you heard it in your high school creative writing or English classroom? Or maybe this is the first time you are hearing it. One of the five natural powers (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing) through which you receive information about the world around you. We understand mentally through what our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin understand physically. We do not understand through abstract thought. How we make sense of the words on the page. This is how we make sense of the writing. What types of interpretations does this image invite? What others do you perceive? What effects do the images in the above example have on your intellect? What types of connections, contrasts, resonance, and suggestions do the images make? For example, notice the contrast between the shady classroom and the sunny sidewalk. But once a piece of creative writing contains specific images and details, those details begin to have an additional effect on the reader’s intellect as the images resonate into symbols and create connections and suggestions. In example two above, vivid details invite your senses to take in the scene. It, therefore, engages our senses and sensibilities much more directly. The second example is much more detailed and imagistic than the first.
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