Poetry and Pictures - how do we 'see' them and what is the link?
Imagery: The meaning of Imagery evolves from the Latin 'of a likeness' and covers the use of language to represent a sensory or extra-sensory experience. Through pushing out our descriptions of what we see, the use of simile and metaphor is very effective. Look at this extract from Lazarus and the Sea by Peter Redgrove ....
'They spread like whispered conversations
Through all the numbed rippling tissues radiated
Like a tree for thirty years from the still centre
Of my salt ovum. ...'
Illusion: What writers create to make the reader feel they are sharing in the experience of hearing, feeling, tasting, seeing and smelling. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a good example ...
'My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
The important element of illusion is for the writer and the reader to appreciate together the pace and element of content in the work.
Ideograph: This is rarer in English but means 'a picture of the thing itself' - or is more applicable to a written symbol. The Chinese and Japanese languages are ideographic. The symbol is generally drawn from a picture of representation.
So there are above, three literary words for you which all begin with 'i' and work on how poetry and wider literature is perceived through how we see through what is written.
