Chapter Four: The Imagery of Modern Poetry
Section One: The Theoretical Foundations of Imagery in Modern Poetry
“Image” (image) is the primary constitutive element in modern poetry, and it is also the object upon which “musicality” is attached. In poetic literary works, it refers to the expression of human intellectual and emotional experience through concrete forms or visual scenes; these “concrete forms or visual scenes” are what constitute the image. Images in poetry can be used to represent objects, actions, emotions, thoughts, and psychological states.
I. Chinese theories of imagery
In the Eastern Han Chinese literary tradition, the earliest introduction of “image” into the field of literary theory is attributed above all to Liu Xie in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons · Shensi (Spiritual Thought): “The craftsman of solitary vision, observing images of meaning and wielding the axe.” Through figurative metaphor, this illustrates that creators compose by relying on imagined forms, and further points out that the use of imagery is “the foremost technique for controlling writing.”
1. Theory of the fusion of emotion and scene
Among theories of imagery, the “emotion–scene fusion theory” (or “emotion and scene interpenetration theory”) most fully explains the meaning of “image.” “Emotion,” “principle,” and “scene,” “object” are the four elements expressed in poetry. “Emotion and principle” refer to subjective mental activity, while “scene and object” refer to the objective physical world; the two are mutually internal and external, complementing one another. The foremost advocate of this theory is Wang Fuzhi of the Ming dynasty. In his Jiang Zhai Poetry Talks, he wrote: “Scene and emotion merge; emotion arises from scene, and originally they are inseparable, only following where intention leads.” He also wrote: “Emotion arises within scene, scene contains emotion; therefore scene is the scene of emotion, and emotion is the emotion of scene.” Furthermore: “Emotion and scene are named as two, yet in reality cannot be separated; the most spiritual in poetry is the wondrous fusion without boundary,” pointing out the mutual generation and integration between emotion and scene. Whether it is “emotion arising from scene” or “embedding emotion within scene,” poets must harmonize the two, and when handling imagery, must properly grasp the principle of “emotion as abstract, scene as concrete; mutual concealment of the virtual and the real,” so that subject and object, emotion and scene are fused, reaching a realm where meaning exists beyond the image. Similar ideas are also found in Zhu Tingzhen’s Xiaoyuan Poetry Talks: “In writing scenery, sometimes emotion lies within the scene, sometimes outside the scene; in writing emotion, sometimes emotion contains scene, sometimes scene arises from emotion; there is never emotionless scene or sceneless emotion. Sometimes emotion need not be stated yet is deeper; sometimes scene need not be written yet fully appears; they generate and merge, becoming one whole. Emotion is scene, scene is emotion, like mirror flowers and water moon, empty brightness reflecting, lively and exquisite.” He also wrote: “Emotion–scene fusion means scene contains emotion and emotion contains scene, fused into one inseparable whole.”
The modern poet Bai Ling (Zhuang Zuhuang) also proposed a similar view: “Image is emotion, scene is image; or emotion embedded in scene, or emotion arising from scene, or mutual fusion.” This aligns closely with Wang Fuzhi’s theory.
2. Theory of artistic realm (jingjie)
Modern aesthetician Zhu Guangqian, from the relationship between “emotion” and “scene,” developed the “theory of artistic realm”: “What predecessors called ‘emotion arises from scene, scene arises from emotion,’ where emotion and scene mutually generate and fit without separation—emotion appropriately corresponds to scene, and scene appropriately expresses emotion—this is the realm of poetry. Every poetic realm must contain two elements: ‘feeling’ and ‘image.’ ‘Feeling’ is abbreviated as emotion, and ‘image’ is scene.” Zhu Guangqian further stated: “Poetry takes feeling as its main essence; feeling appears in sound and resides in imagery.” The present author refers to this as the “image–feeling theory.”
3. Theory of impression re-presentation
How do modern poets view imagery? Tan Zihao states in “On Modern Poetry”: “Image is the re-presentation of impressions after being refined through the poet’s experience of things; this re-presented impression is a creation purified by the poet’s thought and emotion. It is no longer the initial impression absorbed by the poet, but becomes a perceptible imagination. Therefore, the poetic realm of imagination is not the realm of reality, yet it possesses artistic authenticity.” This points out that imagery is a creative “re-presentation of impression,” producing perceptible imagination; this is referred to here as the “impression re-presentation theory.”
4. Theory of image restoration (reconstruction)
Poet Yu Guangzhong writes in “On Imagery”: “Imagery is one of the fundamental conditions constituting poetry; it is difficult to imagine a poem without imagery, just as it is difficult to imagine a poem without rhythm. So-called imagery is the poet’s internal intention expressed as external form; the reader then, based on this external form, attempts to restore the poet’s original internal intention.” This points out that imagery serves as a bridge between the poet’s creation of poetic text and the reader’s interpretation of the poem. From the reader’s perspective, through interpreting the imagery in the text, one reverses back to the author’s original meaning. This is referred to as the “image restoration theory.”
5. Theory of image integration
Poet Chen Yizhi states: “Image is formed by the combination of subjective inner intention and objective external form. Subjective intention is internal and elusive; objective phenomena are visible, audible, and tangible.” Thus, intention is internal and subjective, and must be combined with external objective phenomena. This is referred to here as the “image integration theory.”
6. Theory of figurative thinking
Poet Jian Zhengzhen states: “Image is transformed from perception through consciousness into imagery. Poetry is the projection of the poet’s consciousness onto the objective world. Image is the poet’s interpretation of the object through language; it is the poet’s thinking. … Image-thinking is an essential element of poetry’s existence. Therefore, serious poets not only require organic integration of imagery across the entire poem, but also strive for poetic vitality through image-thinking between individual lines.” He believes that “image” is the poet expressing internal “emotion and principle” through external concrete objects—that is, the “visualization of abstract thinking.” In this creative process of visualization, the poet must harmonize abstract emotional thinking with concrete imagery. This is referred to as the “figurative thinking theory.”
II. Western theories of imagery
1. Theory of image and feeling
Aesthetician Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) believed: “Poetry is the expression of imagery, whereas prose is the expression of judgment and concepts.” He further stated: “Art entrusts a kind of feeling within an image; neither feeling nor image can exist independently once separated.” This theory points out the difference between poetry and prose in expressive form: poetry uses imagery as the primary component and mode of expression, whereas prose mainly uses narration and reasoning. It also emphasizes the relationship of “entrustment” between image and feeling—a relationship of attachment, different from the “composite” fusion relationship described below.
2. Theory of the composite
Imagist poet Ezra Pound (1885–1973) said: “An image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant. … It is this sudden presentation of a ‘complex’ that gives a sense of sudden liberation, a feeling of freedom from spatial and temporal limitation, a sense of sudden expansion we experience before the greatest works of art.” The “composite” relationship emphasizes the moment of image production, similar to what is called “inspiration,” and the free associative leap across time and space triggered by it.
3. Objective correlative theory
British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) wrote in “Hamlet and His Problems”: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion. When the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” Artists express emotion through “objective correlatives.” In visual arts this theory is persuasive; however, in poetry, the process of selecting such correlatives has already been filtered through subjective aesthetic experience. Therefore, it would be more reasonable to call them “subjective objective correlatives.”
4. Theory of emotional expression
American poet C. D. Lewis discussed the function of imagery in modern poetry as follows: “Image is a method that appeals to the reader’s imagination, a language-picture drawn by the poet’s imagination. An image is not merely used to record or reflect the object the poet observes. When the poet sees things, he describes them colored by his emotions, and colored by the overall poetic atmosphere; this is the function of imagery.” Poet Chen Chien-wu further elaborated: “For the poet, an image must express the emotion required by the poem being written, and fulfill the task of emphasizing the theme, while also connecting with other images in the poem. Only then can imagery evoke poetic emotion within us.” Image is a language-picture drawn by the poet’s imagination, and such “language-pictures” appear concrete and emotionally colored in the reader’s mind.
III. Semiotic Imagery
In the West, within modern linguistics (semiotics), imagery is expressed through the “language code.” The code itself possesses the signifier (significant, “signifiant”) and the signified meaning (signifier, “signifié”). Roland Barthes (1915–1980) defines the first signifier formed through combination as “form,” and the second signified meaning as “concept.” Then the whole composed of “form” and “concept” is named by Roland Barthes as “signification,” and what is expressed is “myth” (Myth). Expanding the scope of “image,” and observing from the commanding heights of “culture” and “literature,” “physical image” and “connotation” are two important components of imagery. Among them, “physical image” belongs to sensory experience; it can be one or more concrete objects perceived through sensory cognition, is the carrier of informational meaning, and is the objective part in the constitution of cultural imagery; “connotation” is usually an abstract thought or emotion, an extension of the physical image within a certain literary context and even the entire cultural environment, and is the subjective expressive part in the constitution of cultural imagery. The function of imagery is, in different contexts, to express the abstract through the concrete, and to illuminate the unknown or difficult-to-know through the known or easily known.
Section 2: Imagery and Sensory Function
Poetic imagery, in concrete form, includes objects perceived by the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch), both tangible and intangible (such as bird song, flower fragrance, bitterness and sweetness, cold and heat). They perform in poetic lines and convey the author’s intention (emotion and reason). The range of imagery in modern poetry is even broader; anything perceived by the senses, whether ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, can enter poetic lines to be enacted without restriction.
Before writing poetry, poets usually go through two stages: the triggering stage and the gestation stage. In the triggering stage, changes in external things cause the poet’s five sensory responses; these sensory responses stimulate the poet’s inner emotions, forming certain “inner feelings.” Then it enters the gestation stage, in which the poet magnifies these feelings and, according to different forms of feeling, uses various forms of association (Association) to search for concrete objects and abstract diction that can be used to express or convey these feelings.
In the field of psychology, the primary form of “association” is “simple association” (association), which includes “contiguity association,” “similarity association,” “contrast association,” “(causal) relational association,” and “sensory association.” The more advanced form is “complex association” (imagination), which includes “reproductive imagination” and “creative imagination.”
I. Association: Simple Association
Simple association, as a broad sense of imagination, is drawn by the present object of perception; it is imagination generated on the basis of representations arising in direct perception. It cannot be separated from the specific life experience of the time and place, and its main characteristic is the universality of experience. In other words, simple association is a psychological process based on existing aesthetic experience, in which old experience is used, according to “generalization,” to evoke and integrate new experience. It cannot escape the limitations of prior experience.
The author lists the following five types of association separately, for the convenience of immediate understanding of their theoretical bases and corresponding rhetorical devices:
Type of association: Similarity association
Theoretical basis: Psychology: generalization; Aesthetics: law of similarity, that is, association formed based on similarity or closeness in qualities, states, or content between things.
Definition: The perception or recollection of one thing evokes another thing that is similar or close to it in nature, called similarity (analogical) association. Based on a certain similarity in nature or appearance between object A and object B, the creator or speaker grasps the point of similarity between them, uses A to represent B, and uses this to refer to that.
Examples: Thinking of chrysanthemum brings to mind Tao Yuanming who resigned from office and retired to Nanshan; thinking of plum blossoms brings to mind Lin Bu’s “hidden fragrance and sparse shadows.” Thinking of a little girl’s rosy cheeks brings to mind a red apple.
Corresponding rhetorical devices:
(1) Metaphor: most metaphors rely on similarity association, such as using “autumn wind and autumn rain” to represent revolutionary situations, or “pines and cypresses remain green after frost” to describe strong will and noble integrity.
(2) Symbolism: symbolism uses concrete imagery to express abstract ideas and emotions; the relationship between the concrete image and abstract concept or emotion may arise from rational association, social convention, or even deliberate creative invention.
Type of association: Contiguity association
Theoretical basis: Aesthetics: law of contiguity. Contiguity association is based on spatial-temporal proximity between things.
Definition: Things that are close in space or time tend to form connections in experience and thus easily evoke one another. Because two things A and B are relatively close in time or space, the creator, through experience, habitually links them together, forming a stable conditioned reflex: when A is perceived, B is evoked, along with corresponding emotional responses.
Examples: For example, when mentioning mountain railways, one easily thinks of Alishan; mentioning the Qijiawan River evokes the salmon. This is spatial proximity. Mentioning Huangmei evokes the plum rain season; mentioning blooming cherry blossoms evokes early spring chill, which is temporal proximity.
Corresponding rhetorical devices:
(1) Demonstrative evocation: a method based on changes in time and space, whose main function is to bring absent things into present visualization. When used, readers seem to see a scene from another time and space unfolding before them. In short, “demonstrative evocation” is a kind of imagination of “time-space traversal and virtual reality.”
(2) Metonymy: based on contiguity association, where the substituted term and the original term have no similarity but only adjacency. From a psychological perspective, whether part and whole, specific and general, genus and species, concrete and abstract, cause and effect, container and contained, tool and user, etc., all involve relational connections that create a sense of proximity in the mind and trigger associative thinking.
Type of association: Contrast association
Theoretical basis: Aesthetics: law of contrast. Contrast association is based on opposing relations in nature or appearance between two things, strengthening understanding and perception of their opposition.
Definition: The perception or recollection of one thing evokes another that has opposite characteristics, called contrast association. It reflects both the commonality and the opposing individuality of things; without commonality, opposition cannot be recognized. Contrast association helps people perceive opposites and is important for understanding and analysis.
Examples: Darkness and light are both “brightness” (commonality), but one is low in brightness and the other high. Summer and winter are both seasons, but one is hot and the other cold.
Corresponding rhetorical devices:
(1) Antithesis (contrastive parallelism): placing two opposing ideas or things side by side for comparison, highlighting their opposition or relation.
(2) Parallelism (balanced opposition): a more formal type of contrast using sentences of equal length and similar structure to express opposing or related meanings.
Type of association: (Causal) relational association
Theoretical basis: Semantics: (1) causality, the conditional relationship in which a specific cause leads to a certain result. (2) relationality, connections formed through other relations between things.
Definition: Relational law: relations formed through part-whole or genus-species connections, such as thinking of stationery from a pen, or a pen from stationery. Causal law: conditional relationships in which a cause produces a result, such as thinking of pines from cold weather, or warmth from a fire.
Examples: Adjacent law: due to spatial adjacency or attribute association, such as “snow evokes hermits, flowers evoke beauties, wine evokes knights, moon evokes friends, mountains and rivers evoke inspired poetry” (Zhang Chao, Dream Shadows).
Corresponding rhetorical devices:
(1) Metonymy: “relational association” is part of “contiguity association,” and the two overlap in nature; both are based on a sense of proximity between two dissimilar things. This relational proximity arises from past experience, i.e., memory. Therefore, some rhetoricians classify metonymy under relational association.
(2) Jieli (listing imagery): arranging several nouns or noun phrases in sequence to form a sentence. The succession among nouns comes from spatial contiguity, such as “withered vines, old trees, crows at dusk; small bridge, flowing water, people’s homes; ancient road, west wind, thin horse” (Ma Zhiyuan, Autumn Thoughts in Pure Sky Sand).
Type of association: Sensory association
Theoretical basis: Psychology: imitation; Aesthetics: empathy (transference of feeling).
Definition: It refers to the response of the five senses when receiving external stimuli, usually expressed through descriptive imitation. When sensory perception shifts, different senses interact and exchange domains, producing “synaesthesia,” where an image originally perceived by one sense is expressed through another sensory modality.
Examples: (1) descriptive writing: “White egrets fly before Xisai Mountain; mandarin fish grow fat in peach blossom flowing water. Green bamboo hat, green straw raincoat, in slanting wind and drizzle one need not return” (Zhang Zhihe, Song of the Fisherman). (2) synaesthesia: “Cicada” — he took the cicada sounds recorded this year on the opposite mountain into the recorder and took them out to let the children warm themselves by the fire (Guan Guan).
Corresponding rhetorical devices:
(1) Description: using language to vividly depict colors, sounds, shapes, scenes, and states of real-life phenomena.
(2) Synaesthesia: transferring sensations from one sensory field to another through associative activity, so that senses communicate with each other.
In structural linguistics, “similarity association” and “contiguity association” are the most basic forms of aesthetic imagination. The Russian linguist Jakobson, in his 1962 paper “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” first pointed out that the relationship of components in syntagmatic structure (syntagm) is characterized by contiguity (contiguite), while the relationship in paradigmatic structure (paradigm) is characterized by similarity (similarite). “This is an excellent insight: contiguity has only one possibility, while similarity can exist in different aspects; thus the same component can belong to multiple paradigmatic sets.” Jakobson further pointed out: “These two features are in fact the two main types of metaphor: metaphor based on similarity (similarity association) is metaphor, substituting based on similarity in one aspect, such as using flowers to represent girls; while metaphor based on contiguity is metonymy, substituting based on a certain contiguity relation, such as using skirts or braids to represent girls.”
Jacques Jakobson, in another essay “The Two Poles of Metaphor and Metonymy,” argues that these two modes of association are the two poles of all human symbolic activity. From a linguistic perspective, these are the two poles of metaphor and metonymy; the internal laws that constitute these two poles are the law of similarity and the law of contiguity. Metaphor lies in “metaphorizing,” while metonymy lies in “substitution”; the former primarily performs a descriptive function, while the latter primarily performs a referential function. From the perspective of literary history, these two poles constitute representation and expression, namely the two stylistic tendencies of realism and romanticism. The author, referring to the concise diagram in Ye Lang’s edited Modern Aesthetic System (p.177), reorganizes Jakobson’s binary division of “syntagm (combination axis) and paradigm (selection axis)” as follows:
Syntagm (syntagm; combination axis) → contiguity (contiguity association) → law of contiguity → metonymy → expression → Romanticism
Paradigm (paradigm; selection axis) → similarity (similarity association) → law of similarity → metaphor → representation → Realism
II. Imagination: Complex Association
When the problems people face cannot be directly solved through prior experience, knowledge, theory, or method using a “generalization” model, it becomes necessary to engage in independent thinking and reanalyze and recombine the various types of information stored in the mind to form connections that satisfy needs. This type of thinking is called creative thinking.
Creative imagination is a form of creative thinking. In nature, it belongs to divergent thinking, lateral thinking, and non-logical thinking; that is, it does not rely on present direct perception or on stored memory representations, but can, through analysis and synthesis, create new images. Therefore, it breaks through the limitations of experience and generates new forms of imagistic thinking. Generally speaking, in the appreciation of beauty, reproductive imagination dominates; in the creation of beauty, creative imagination dominates.
(I) Reproductive Imagination
Definition: “People can, based on figurative descriptions provided by others—including descriptions made through language or other material means—construct new images in their own consciousness. Many images never seen or heard before can, through others’ descriptions, appear as if present before us, becoming aesthetic objects, thereby greatly expanding our aesthetic horizon.” In other words, “reproductive imagination” refers to the psychological activity in which people, based on figurative descriptions provided by others, through interpretive and expressive imagination, transform and innovate, creating vivid and novel images full of freshness.
Explanation: In rhetorical figures, “imitation-adaptation” (fangni) and “imitation-satire” (fangfeng) precisely apply existing figurative descriptions or established discourse structures to transform and recreate them. “Imitation-adaptation” refers to deliberately imitating existing forms of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or texts in order to attract attention or create humor or satire, thereby producing new expressions with different content. This is the broad definition of imitation rhetoric, including imitation-satire.
Burlesque (fangfeng) refers to a rhetorical form that imitates another’s work in syntactic and tonal form while also producing humorous or mocking effects, or satirizing social phenomena. It can also be called “imitation satire,” meaning that incongruity between form and content produces a humorous effect.
From the psychological perspective of “imitation and identification,” burlesque can be explained as a state composed of “linguistic formal imitation” and “subversive (non-identificatory) intention.” As scholar Tan Yongxiang states, it is “the original form and the model are both identical and different, both the same and not the same.”
(II) Creative Imagination
Definition: “A psychological activity in which, without relying on others’ descriptions, one creatively synthesizes stored memory representations and independently creates novel, unique, and strange images is called creative imagination.” In creative imagination, the creator uses imagination to construct a clear image of something they wish to realize, focusing attention on this idea or picture, endowing it with affirmative energy until it eventually becomes objective reality.
Explanation: In rhetoric, “symbol” and “hyperbole” are typical forms of creative imagination. Symbol operates under the subconscious through suggestive free association. Hyperbole, during free association, presents partial distortions of imagined objects (expansion or reduction) through the mirror of the subconscious. A “curious mentality” is the psychological basis of hyperbole, originating from stimulus difference; its aesthetic basis is the absurd and grotesque sense of novelty. Scholar Huang Qingxuan defines it as: “In language and writing, exaggeration and embellishment exceed objective fact, making the expressed image more prominent and the emotion clearer, thereby deepening the impression on readers or listeners.” The phrase “exceeding objective fact” refers to its form; “making the image more prominent and emotion clearer” refers to its effect; “deepening the impression” refers to its purpose. Huang further points out that the subjective factor is the author’s desire to be striking, while the objective factor is the reader’s curiosity.
III. Practical Operation of Various Types of Association
One grasps a concept or emotion and extends it from a “point” into a “line” (main axis), and then layer by layer expands it into a “plane” (context). Through associative practice, one identifies relevant and usable imagery, first extracting concrete images, classifying them, and listing them systematically.
(I) Contiguity Association
The perception or recollection of one thing evokes another that is close to it in nature, called contiguity association.
“Spring river tide reaches sea level; on the sea bright moon rises with the tide. Glimmering waves travel for thousands of miles; where is there a spring river without moonlight?”
Spring river → tide → sea → bright moon (both distant and close) are connected.
Topic: Alishan
For the topic “Alishan,” what related and adjacent concrete images come to mind?
People: Tsou people, tourists, hunters, mountain log poachers
Culture: rituals (war ceremony, life bean festival), sweetfish, kuba (traditional house), mythology
Local products: coffee, tea, specialty foods
Scenery: forest, railway, forest composition zones, sea of clouds, sunrise, cherry blossoms, Shanzhenda Naa-yu Valley, suspension bridges, homestays
Try using these image sets to write a short poem of about twenty lines.
(1) First construct a story outline
(2) Use this story to assemble visual scenes
(3) Select usable imagery according to the scenes
(4) Arrange the scenes along the story axis and narrative line
You may write purely about objects (expressing feelings through objects), describe scenery (expressing emotion through landscape), or narrate a touching story.
(II) Similarity Association
When one thing evokes another due to similarity in external features or nature, it is called similarity association. For example: “The mountain is a frozen wave” (Zheng Chouyu, Letter from Beyond the Mountain).
Topic: “First Love”
For the topic “First Love,” what concrete images with similar qualities or characteristics come to mind?
Qualities: honey lemon tea (sweet and sour), balloon (emotional rise and fall), train (passing stop, hesitation about boarding), window on the wall (sunlight entering), flying a kite, holding a skylark in the hand
Features: fear of loss and expectation (emotional stakes), cannot tolerate even a grain of sand in the eyes (possessiveness)
Using “First Love” as the title, write a ten-line poem using similarity association.
(III) Contrast Association
Through one familiar thing, one thinks of another thing opposite in nature or characteristic; this is called contrast association, also called reverse association. For example: desert and forest, beauty and beast, city and countryside, God (good) and Satan (evil), reason and emotion, day and night, ice (coldness) and fire (passion), perfection and imperfection.
Topic 1: Beauty and the Beast
Topic 2: Wife and mistress
Choose one topic and write a ten-line poem using contrast association.
(IV) (Causal) Relational Association
This refers to association arising because two things are in a causal relationship. Such association is often bidirectional, from cause to effect or from effect to cause. For example:
“Or what is called spring” ∕ Yu Guangzhong
The so-called wife
once was a bride
the so-called bride
once was a girlfriend
the so-called girlfriend
was once very shy
(excerpt)
Topic: Countryside
For the topic “countryside,” what concrete images related to or subsumed under it come to mind?
People: farmers, farm women, village girls, elderly people, children
Scenery: straw stacks, scarecrows, farmland, ponds, irrigation channels
Animals and plants: crops, flowers, fruits and vegetables, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese
Tools: ox carts, plows, bamboo hats, raincoats, straw sandals
Using the above imagery, write a short poem of about ten lines, which may be divided into stanzas or not.
(5) Sensory Association
Integrate your five senses to observe and experience, and vividly describe their forms and various characteristics. Please use the provided imagery or find usable imagery on your own, and write a short poem of about 10 lines. It may be divided into stanzas or not divided.
Title: Self-selected
(1) Vision: caterpillar, tattoo, stinging nettle cat, sea urchin, wild dog, fungi
(2) Hearing: bird calls and insect chirps, valley echoes, wind and rain sounds, singing, bell sounds
(3) Smell: floral fragrance, sweat odor, mildew smell, fishy stench
(4) Taste: bitterness, sweetness, sourness, fresh sweetness, burnt taste
(5) Touch: icy cold, warmth, needle-sting, smoothness
(6) Reproductive Imagination
By imitation and parody, create texts (sentences) similar to the original text (sentences), yet with original ingenuity.
Example sentences: “Keeping the butt alive, not afraid of running out of gas,” “Spring sleep unaware of dawn, dream talk as numerous as hairs, night comes cat’s cry, how much sleep is known?”
Example text: Nanyang Li Yu (Li Houzhu) “Yumeiren”
Fangcheng sparrow war when will it end, chips gradually decreasing, just now casually changed seats, the upper house playing cards seems like a doctor.
One four seven wan should still exist, but cannot come out, I ask you how many chips remain? Only see salary continuously flowing outward.
(7) Creative Imagination
Creative imagination is also called horizontal leap thinking, which is the opposite of vertical logical (causal relationship) thinking. It is different from “metonymy” or “contiguous” thinking, and is closer to the surreal “automatic syntax,” but it is not completely free from rational control. For example:
〈When Not Wanting to Sleep〉 / Qiu Huan
One must not lie
write wrong characters
restrain love.
deliberately desert calm occasionally smile
getting up need not deliberately fold the quilt
shake open the dream
a dazed season of winter
must realize better to live badly than to die well
then
eat a plate of egg fried rice
purify the body
〈Connecting Lines〉 / Xia Yu
Envelope
thumbtack
freedom
magnet
sidewalk
fifth floor
flashlight
drum
method
laugh
movable type
□ □
to wear
innocent
royal blue
dig
Section Three: Imagery and Cinematic Use
The “xiang” in imagery includes external phenomena perceivable by the five senses. Poets possess sharper observational ability and more sensitive perception than ordinary people. Among the five sensory activities, vision often plays the primary role in receiving various kinds of information. In both ancient and modern poetry, what is described is mostly what is seen visually, and what readers receive is a sequence of images, one after another.
Bai Pu, “Tian Jingsha (Autumn)”:
A lonely village, setting sun, remaining glow.
Light smoke, old trees, cold crows.
A single flying wild goose casts its shadow downward.
Green mountains, clear waters.
White grass, red leaves, yellow flowers.
In this qu, each line is descriptive of scenery; individual objects and landscapes are arranged in the form of “listed brocade,” and together they form a pictorial image of a mountain village in autumn. The poet uses the eye as a camera, scanning each image from far to near, then from near to far: a long shot distant view of “lonely village, setting sun, remaining glow,” a mid-range shot of “light smoke, old trees, cold crows,” a close focus on “a single flying wild goose casts its shadow downward,” then the camera pulls back again, shifting to “green mountains, clear waters. white grass, red leaves, yellow flowers.” Bai Pu of course did not understand the principles of long and short shots or montage, but he knew how to use visual perception to classify and arrange imagery by distance.
Modern poets likewise use a large number of visual images, especially in modernism’s “collage art,” which is primarily based on visual imagery. Consider the postmodern witch Xia Yu’s “All the People Who Have Loved Sit There Singing Loudly”:
All the people who have loved sit there singing loudly
becoming finally music
flowing along the broken cup
each fragment rises a semitone and finally
becomes a fountain. An afternoon of running away from home
staring at the clock, watching the minute hand
move from 1 to 2, fully feeling tortured.
The dictionary on the neat desk
is opened, red pen marking checked vocabulary:
suitable for funerals; sinister. [steamships, trains]
chimneys. farther away, more. coarse cotton cloth;
exaggerated speech. Greek cross shape, swastika shape.
All the people who have loved sit there under the window in a row
singing loudly, light and imperceptible, with
an immediate tendency to disappear.
“In the small passage of three lines: ‘suitable for funerals; sinister. [steamships, trains] / chimneys. farther away, more. coarse cotton cloth; / exaggerated speech. Greek cross shape, swastika shape.’—funerals, automobiles, trains, chimneys, coarse cotton cloth, Greek cross shape, swastika shape—these concrete physical objects (visual imagery) are arranged and collaged in three different types of line breaks respectively. Except for the final line, every line appeals to visual imagery and contains more than one concrete object, forming more than one image, giving the feeling of leading the reader to watch a micro-film composed of successive visual scenes. As for what emotions or ideas the author intends to convey, this poem seems unable to provide sufficient clues for inference from literal meaning alone.”
Apart from “imagery collage,” poets also use the interactive deployment of long and short shots and the shifting of camera focus to produce a “horizontal leap” of imagery, as in Hung Hung’s “New Life”:
〈New Life〉 / Hung Hung
There are three apples on the shelf
they make me see the ocean
I ride my bike to town and bring back fresh bread
passing through morning seaweed together with shoals of fish
last night’s poetry collection is like you asleep
spread open on a page full and satisfied
no need to add any more lines
so I also put down my pen
listening to the tide rising in my heart and in the papaya tree in the backyard
inch by inch
In the first stanza, visual imagery jumps back and forth, presenting an interwoven scene of land and sea: “apples” → “ocean” → “town,” “bread” → “shoal of fish” → “seaweed.” Such visual movement keeps the image in a lively, flowing aesthetic state.
Section Four: The Fallacy of “Poetry Without Imagery”
Late Qing scholar Zhu Tingzhen in Xiaoyuan Poetical Remarks wrote: “In writing scenery, either emotion is within the scene, or emotion is outside the scene; in writing emotion, either emotion contains scenery, or scenery arises from emotion; there is absolutely no scene without emotion, nor emotion without scene…”. Modern writer Yu Guangzhong, in “On Imagery,” states: “Imagery is one of the fundamental conditions of the art of poetry; it is difficult to imagine a poem without imagery, just as it is difficult to imagine a poem without rhythm.” Both ancient and modern scholars consider “poetry without imagery” to be a false proposition.
Su Shaolian emphasizes “poetry without imagery,” while on the one hand declaring: “poetry grows strong through imagery,” yet on the other hand contradicting himself by stating: “poetry without imagery must not contain visual form, but may contain other sensory phenomena.” In other words, what he calls “poetry without imagery” merely excludes “visual imagery,” while still retaining other sensory types of imagery.
Consider the two poetic examples cited by Su Shaolian:
〈Hibernation〉 / Xia Yu
I merely stored enough love
enough tenderness and cunning
just in case
upon waking I meet you
I merely stored enough pride
enough loneliness and indifference
just in case
The subject “I” and “you,” and the dynamic verbs “store” and “wake,” the former involves a concrete (perceptible) human figure, while the latter contains action cues that guide visual imagination; all of these cannot be separated from visual function.
White Ling, “Pendulum”
Left drip right answer, how narrow is the angle of this time
swim in is life, swim out is death
drip, love is dawn, answer, desire is already dusk
drip is the past, answer is the future
countless presents pass through the gaps of drip and answer
Su’s commentary states: “This is a standard ‘poetry without imagery.’ The poem contains only sensory phenomena; nothing but phenomena. Auditory elements include ‘drip’ and ‘answer’; kinetic elements include ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘swim in,’ ‘swim out,’ ‘pass through’; conceptual elements include narrowness, time, angle, life, death, love, dawn, dusk, past, future, gap. The ‘angle’ is attached to the conceptual ‘time’ and has no physical object as a basis for depiction.”
The present author questions this: “angle,” “gap,” “dusk,” and “dawn” are all visible and perceptible, identifiable visual imagery; “swim in,” “swim out,” and “pass through” are all perceivable dynamic visual imagery. Just like the word “flow,” it may refer to wind (air) flow, liquid (water) flow, or even the flow of light and time. How can there be no visual imagery? Yet these are forcibly turned into mere “phenomena,” claiming that these “perceptible phenomena” are not physical image forms and therefore cannot be called “imagery.”
Note:
Su Shaolian, “On Poetry Without Imagery,” original URL:
http://blog.sina.com.tw/poem/article.php?entryid=626462
