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Enlarging the Landscape of Imagery in Poetry - How?



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Sun Apr 17, 2016 1:00 pm
Lightsong says...



Sorry if the title's too long. c:

After poeting many times, I've came to realize I subconsciously recycled my imageries. Like, I changed black with midnight, and sharp words were resembled by pointy glaciers. Sometimes, I relied on colours' meanings, and used them as the central focus in some of my poems. I don't know, I think my ability to think of more creative, not-used-yet imagery is quite lacking. -_-'

What do you think about it? How can I manage to come up with more fresh imageries instead of laying the old ones again and again? Fellow writers (poet or not) are welcomed to give me tips. :D
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Sun Apr 17, 2016 5:20 pm
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Holysocks says...



The only thing I can think of, is for you to look at things differently. Don't look at a tree and think "oh it's just a tree." Instead see it for everything that it is (maybe you do this already). A tree is living and it gives us air, etc etc. or the moon for example- the worlds night light! Look at things from a newer perspective, like you're seeing everything for the first time again. You might also benefit from reading children's books C: I find they always seem to inspire me, but maybe that's just me.

I'm not that good at imagery myself, but I hope this was somewhat helpful!
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Sun Apr 17, 2016 6:11 pm
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passenger says...



Description is something that I struggle with sometimes, too, probably because it's such a vital component in both poetry and prose.

You say that you have a habit of recycling imagery (i.e. black -->> midnight // words -->> glaciers). If I had any advice, I would suggest that you channel the adjectives that you're trying to convey into similar nouns. Let's use the word / glacier example. You're associating the words and glaciers together pictorially because they're both 'sharp', right? Think of other sharp things. Fork tines. The snap of a rubber band. Searing pain. A serrated knife, nails on a chalkboard, a papercut. That gives you a whole bunch more imagery to work with.

And then, let's say you choose the knife analogy. You can develop a larger metaphor interwoven with similar imagery. You could compare a sarcastic 'thanks' to the thwack of a machete against the weeds, or a strict 'you don't deserve me' to a whip slicing through flesh. Y'know? (Those were the only examples of "sharp words" that I could think of off the top of my head. :b )

With the blackness / midnight example, since you're conveying how black something is, you could compare the darkness with the shadow lurking on the edge of lamplight, or the black nail polish that someone had spilled over the sky. Something like that.

Hopefully that helps / makes sense. ^^
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Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:25 am
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Aley says...



Hey Lightsong,

I've got a little bit different take than the other two I think, maybe not. My suggestion might sound hard, but I think that once you get the gears turning again you'll find it's enjoyable. When you're stuck with descriptions, usually what's happening is you've fallen into something that you've heard elsewhere. The sayings are popular in our culture already, and in the writing we read or hear or see on TV.

The other option is that you're still writing a poem you haven't yet completed. I know that sometimes I'd hit in slumps where I would write so many s alliterations that I started getting sick of sounds that slipped silently over the silky satin stains on the paper. I finally just wrote a poem that basically was all s alliteration, overuse to cold turkey basically, and it helped.

Getting back the creative juices could just be a matter of really finding the poem you want to write by free writing with the words you're using too much until they create something you like, and just starting a new poem when you're in a circle.

Another way to fix it is to pick just the first random word that comes to mind, and have a list of topics you want to write a poem about, then use that for the metaphor. I do this a lot with the Two Cents column I write for Squills occasionally. If I need an example poem, I pick two highly unlikely candidates and then struggle with how to relate them while showing what I want to show. Usually the results are pretty good.

I'd suggest always using nouns that are unrelated things from objects or ideas that you're relating too. Instead of just going with the first or second thing, if you're in a rut like this, go through 5 or 6 different things that you could use as a metaphor, and when you start finding it harder to come up with them, the next one you find is the one you use. For instance, if you think of love, and heart, flower, friendship, parent-child, romantic, book, horses, soul mates, doves, and wolves all come up easily then dismiss them all out of hand. Pick the one that doesn't come up so easy, the one that doesn't leave more of them rolling off the tongue.

It takes longer working like that, but if you only explore one metaphor in depth per poem, then it's worth spending the time.
  








akdsjfh you know that feeling where you start writing a scene but then you get bored with the scene so you move on and start writing a different scene and then you get bored with that scene so you move on to an entirely different WIP and then you get bored with that so you move on-
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