We are told that “poetry paints a picture” and the early 20th century saw a poetry movement—“Imagism”—flourish to some degree, on the back of haiku, a poetry practice which is said to resemble a sudden snapshot or quick sketch.
But all this begs a question—does poetry—as poetry—paint? And if so, how does poetry—as poetry—convey the visual?
It’s a truism: we don’t see poetry.
What do we mean, exactly, when we say poetry “paints?”
It’s also a truism that the simplest piece of prose can make us “see” something.
For example, “the white dress.”
What we actually see are the words “the white dress.” None of us imagine the same “white dress” and the poetry is nowhere to be seen in any virtual seeing, unless “the white dress” is, in fact, poetry. But it’s not.
We need to accept the following fact.
Poetry, by its very nature, is not painting.
All that purports that it is, is just talk.
And it isn’t just that if we have an image without argument, we have no poem.
It isn’t just that image and poem are oil and water and have no true relation whatsoever.
The fact is: poetry has no ability, as poetry, to conjure an image up.
We already demonstrated this as simply and fundamentally as anything could be demonstrated. A blob of prose: “the white dress” produces an image in the mind’s eye as well as any poem could.
So if we are intent on image as a poet, our poetry will only slide into prose to conjure such a thing. Poetry was not invented to make images—we have an eye for that; we have painting for that; unless we say blindness (Homer) invented poetry, but this is only further proof poetry is blind.
In truth, poetry cannot have any images that are true. The poet bent on image needs a waking: “You should be a painter, then. Your poems will never be sublime; they will always be quaint, sentimental, homely, no matter what the critics say.”
But you protest: “But what of the glorious imagery I experience (see in the mind’s eye) in some of my favorite poems? I could name plenty! This alone proves you are wrong!”
I would say: you enjoy poems as poems—and what they say is their whole being.
If some of what poems say happens to include a mention of objects and added descriptions of those objects (suggestion working better than any “clarity” you may convince yourself is “there”) this is no indication that you are seeing anything—a poem, truly, is only heard in the mind.
Because a poem is a poem only in so much as what it says is its whole being, poetry is deaf to seeing. Your “seeing” has nothing at all to do with the worth or the appreciation of the poem. You only convince yourself otherwise.
I see Tennyson and Shelley, even Shakespeare, quietly nodding in agreement. Your error indicates only that you, if you do have such aspirations, ought to be a painter, not a poet.
Like William Carlos Williams, or Charles Olson, or any of the vast number of mistaken moderns, you are in the wrong field.