There will be regalete rejoicing today. In a celebration of the beauty of the day, there will be a flurry of short poems, all of the imagist persuasion. These poems are like a direct injection of experience into your brain.
What I mean is this: sometimes we see something, a leaf fall, for example, that strikes us as beautiful, or noteworthy in some way.
However, if we try to convey this to someone ("I saw a leaf fall, and it was so cool), it's likely that it won't have the same meaning for them. We can't communicate it.
The beauty of imagetic poetry is that, if it's done right, the moment can be transported across the void between us people, in the same vividity of the original eye. We see what they see, feel what they feel.
Enjoy.
Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Taniguchi Buson "The Piercing Chill I Feel"
The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel ...
T E Hulme "Image"
Old houses were scaffolding once
and workmen whistling
Penny Harter
broken bowl
the pieces
still rocking
Jennifer Brutshy
Born Again
she speaks excitedly
of death
Adelle Foley "Learning to Shave (Father Teaching Son)
A nick on the jaw
The razor's edge of manhood
Along the bloodline
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