I can’t find or think of a better example of the “show, don’t tell” technique than poetry’s imagism movement. I also think an explanation using images of a sculpture might help elaborate further on what it means compared to using just words.
While this poem perhaps seems vague and ambiguous, at first, it is much more than that. Its simplicity and brevity evokes so much of your imagination that it does not need more words to explain it. Any more would ruin it. So much said with so few words. “Show, don’t tell” summarized then put on a diet. Next time you’re in a metro (or look at the picture above), take a look around at the faces you see and tell me Pound’s poem isn’t timeless!
The early 20th-century poetic movement, Imagism, was a reaction against poetry of the Romantic and Victorian eras. Poetry from these eras emphasize details, ornamentation, mystery, emotions, nature, and grandiose attempts at universal themes. The style also required strict structures, such as rhyme and meter.
Imagism reacted to that by emphasizing the idea of capturing a single moment in time, an exact image of a place or an event. That required simplicity, clarity, brevity, and extreme precision to create as much meaning as possible in as few words as possible. Instead of metaphors, imagism relied on “concrete images drawn in precise, colloquial language rather than traditional poetic diction and meter” (Poetry Foundation).
Ezra Pound revealed the idea in Poetry’s March 1913 issue, specifically A Few Don’ts. On a side note, do you see the probably intentional irony in his choice of the word “don’ts?” Pound define what he means by an “Image:”
An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term “complex” rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we might not agree absolutely in our application.
…
It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.
His intention was to use an Image to evoke an extreme sense of emotion, or understanding, or realization, for example. Creating an Image required a few don’ts, including using “no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something” and not use rigid rhythm or rhyme schemes.
The Imagists wrote succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline in which an exact visual image made a total poetic statement.
Pound elaborates further in A Retrospect, published five years later in 1918. Along with poets Hilda Doolittle (“H. D.”) and Richard Aldington, Pound describes the three principles of imagism:
Direct treatment of the “thing” whether subjective or objective.
To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
Imagism Connected to Vorticist Sculpture
While imagism was a poetic movement, I’d like to explain imagism using images. And I have to use an interconnected movement from the art world, Vorticism, a term Pound coined (no pun unintentionally intended).
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica say, “Imagism sought analogy with sculpture,” as Pound promoted sculpture:
I would much rather that people would look at Brzeska’s sculpture and Lewis’s drawings, and that they would read Joyce, Jules Romains, Eliot, than that they should read what I have said of these men [certain French writers in The New Age in nineteen twelve or eleven], or that I should be asked to republish argumentative essays and reviews.
Ezra Pound, A Retrospect
Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound
Pound refers to French painter and sculptor, Henry Gaudier-Brzeska’s, bust of himself, the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound. He was 29 when he commissioned Gaudier-Brzeska to carve his bust, which he did by hand from stone.
The bust captures the outline of Pound’s head with his larger forehead and pointier chin creating a triangular shape, as emphasized in the bust. You can also see his large hairdo and facial hair reflected in the sculpture.
However, the physical similarities end there. The bust appears surreal because it is somehow Pound and not Pound but still Pound. Let me explain! You can clearly see similarities between Pound’s physical head and the sculpted bust.
But the sculpture also captures Pound’s persona and personas, something intangible. The bust is human but not, it seems something more. You cannot tell whether he is old or young, you cannot tell what he is thinking, nor can you can understand what the sculptor’s intention was, at first glance.
The large hair, the direct and stern gaze, and the simple geometric lines suggest this person has power. He transcends normal humans to something more, to something god-like. The hair seems like a military helmet, again a depiction of power. After all, Pound was on a gargantuan mission to save poetry, something that required transcending regular human endeavour and ingenuity. Like imagism, this bust says so much about Pound with so little detail.
Imagism is the screenshot to vorticism’s single, short film scene or even a GIF. Imagism captures the exact moment of a scene in an almost timeless depiction of space. For example, the masses of people merging into one single mysterious blur of faces. Vorticism captures the actions of these people as they enter and exit the observers vision.
Imagism for the 21st Century
Pound looked to the past to help reshape and define the future of poetry. In Pound’s time, change often meant worsening situations and modernity meant people only recently experienced what it meant to have free time. Today, we seem to have less free time every day, and what little time we have needs to be optimized for brevity. Few people like to read anything more than the title of a news article or blog post, even less read longer social media posts. Imagism offers a solution. I mean, let’s not forget that “In a Station of The Metro” is the title but also part of the text. How about that for brevity?
Imagism takes the “show, don’t tell” technique to the extreme. It seems like a small part of an image captured in words, yet it inspires your imagination to picture that image in a way few other literary movements can claim to achieve. Saying more with so few words like imagism prescribes seems better than saying less with more words. This idea seems more important than ever in today’s world of fast and not so fastidious information.
Many scholars consider the Epic of Gilgamesh from the 2nd millenium BCE, as one of the oldest surviving works of good literature. This epic poem focuses on murder, life, love, death and immortality. Dante’s Divine Comedy is again about love, life and death, as are many of Shakespeare’s plays. Opera seems incapable of existing without these topics too. Poems about life, love and death often contain cliches, but the topic itself seems rather overdone. So when I read an early 20th century poem about life and death by Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, I found it refreshing and surprising.
While some translators lambaste Pound for his poor translation of Li Bai’s (Li Po’s) original Chinese poem from “Changgan Xing,” I do not care because it discusses life and death in a personal and intimate way without much cliche. Unless I plan to learn Chinese to read the original, this poem belongs to Pound.
Translations create new works, derivative works yes, but they exist as separate entities in a different language than the original. Considering personas were something new in poetry, it is even more interesting that the speaker, the river-merchant’s wife comes across as a woman.
I don’t know why but I can’t imagine a man writing a letter with phrases like, “You dragged your feet when you went out” or “Please let me know beforehand, / And I will come out to meet you.” Pound’s word choices, phrasing, syntax, style and so on reveal the river-merchant wife’s intimacy and love for her husband.
But Pound did so using the English language, apart from the place names. So maybe I find the poem less cliched than normal for a life, love and death poem because it from a language and culture I do not know much about.
Then again, when I first looked at the title and after I read the first stanza, I had no idea Pound was writing about life and death. And as I said earlier, this is Pound’s work as he had the freedom to choose how to translate the poem.
In the first stanza, the river-merchant’s wife reminds the river-merchant how they used to play together as children. She explains how after they married when she was 14, she “never laughed, being bashful” and when “Called to, a thousand times” by her husband, “never looked back.” This behaviour suggests she never loved him. Though perhaps she was playing hard to get, but I doubt so.
However, when she speaks about life and death, the intimacy exuded by her words struck me:
These words encapsulate life, love and death. Yes, there are similar elements elsewhere. For example, her willingness to travel a long distance (Chōkan to Chō-fū-Sa) to meet him at the end of the poem or when she says things like, “I grow old.”
But, “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours,” seems so intimate and beautiful in its simplicity. The way it sounds due to the “d” sound in “desired,” “dust,” and “mingled” adds to the overall sense of intimacy and beauty. We’re often told when writing, “show, don’t tell.” This line is a great example of “show, don’t tell.” And it’s about death. It even seems cliched when taken out of context due to its Romantic-era emotionality.
In context, however, Pound juxtaposes it with, “Forever and forever, and forever.” That line sounds childish next to the grandeur and adult nature of, “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours.” First, it shows how the river-merchant’s wife loves her husband with an almost childlike fervor. Second, it also shows how she cannot express her love through words and thus must repeat the same word, “forever.” Yet, she appears capable of emotional expression by writing, “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours.” Cremation was uncommon in China until recently. So dust refers to how their deceased bodies will be broken down over time and become one (“mingled”) after death.
Pound’s choice of “mingled” also reveals another idea. The 15th century word originally meant “to mix” or “to combine” something with something else. Since the 17th century, it also meant, “enter into intimate relation, join with others, be sociable.” These mean Pound could have used the word for both its meanings, as in “mix” and “intimate relations” that are both physical.
Perhaps Pound also chose the word for its relation to Chinese history, as part of it, “ming” could refer to its powerful Ming Dynasty that ruled from from 1368 to 1644. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the dynasty, “exerted immense cultural and political influence on East Asia and the Turks to the west, as well as on Vietnam and Myanmar to the south.” Now, perhaps I’m going to far with this word. Either way, the image Pound evokes using the word “mingle,” a word that sounds intimate and is associated with intimacy reveals the beauty of this poem.
So that simple stanza evokes life, love and death in way that is not cliched despite it being written in the 20th century. “Forever” refers to life, love and death. “I desire my dust to be mingled with yours” also refers to life, love and death. Yet they are opposites. How Pound created such complexity with so few words is just brilliant. Maybe it was Li Bai’s concept, I don’t know. But as a Western reader, I view the poem from the Western perspective.
Pound’s version reveals a clear shift from the Romantic era’s grand notions of life, love, and death and that of Modernism. He and managed to evoke the kind of emotionality that the Romantics could only write about. Pound showed while the Romantics told. And because of that, the reader is left to imagine on a personal level the kind of intimacy the river-merchant’s wife had for her husband, based on the reader’s own experiences. This personal connection is perhaps another part of the individuality and intellectual freedom afforded to us by modernity. But its also a great example of how to revive the past to reveal something new and enticing, a brilliant case of show, don’t tell.
Walt Whitman remains a fascinating writer due to his unique and transcendental writing and audacious personality. He read many books as a teenager and mostly taught himself how to write. At 21, he became a full-time journalist and published his own weekly newspaper before working as a newspaper editor for many publications. In 1855, Whitman wrote his famous Leaves of Grass preface and poems, which he self-published. The work is full of spiritual ideas and Whitman comes across as a prophet, elaborating on how to live and think in a way never heard of before or since. That got me thinking, what three ideas can we learn from Whitman that could help us become better writers.
Reprinted from the Library of Congress, Houghton Whitman Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
1. Self-Confidence
While self-confidence is not something easily learned, many of us have the skills needed to succeed but lack the confidence to use these abilities. Whitman is unique in the sense he traverses the border between arrogance and confidence, which is surely natural.
Whitman was so confident in his abilities that he self-published his work because he knew it was good and worthy of being read. He wanted to teach people a better way to live, to shape the American identity the way he believed it should be formed. So confident was Whitman in his work that he sent a first edition copy of Leaves of Grass to the renowned “celebrity” author, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Think about this for a moment, would you send your work to whomever is the best person in your field right now? For instance, would you send your screenplay to Steven Spielberg or James Cameron? Would you send your electric vehicle to Elon Musk? You’d have to be pretty sure or rather insane to even think of let alone do such a thing. But Whitman did! Here is a copy of the letter:
Emerson was so impressed and astonished by Whitman’s work that he wrote a letter praising Whitman, calling it a “wonderful gift.” He also said, which surely constitutes no greater praise, “I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”
As non-Whitman’s, we should have the writing skills to back up what we say. Once we have that, we should be confident in our confident. It should come across in our writing, revealing itself as our unique voices. Whitman’s voice comes across like no other poet or writer I have read. Maybe I prefer other’s writing, perhaps I think their ideas are better. But I have never read a work like Whitman’s, one that is emotional, positive, pretentious, purposeful. One that flows so smoothly from one idea to the next that reading it almost feels like a spiritual experience. Whitman even begins his first poem, Song of Myself, with “I celebrate myself.”
We may not be Whitman’s but we can certainly learn to be more confident with our writing, and indeed confident in ourselves in general.
2. Motivation
Connected to the idea of self-confidence is that we need to have something that motivates us to write, something that makes us want to do nothing but write. Whitman’s motivation was to define what it was to be American, a rather bold and confident idea but one he clearly took to heart.
Finding motivation to write is not always easy, though it seemed to come easy for Whitman. George Orwell, for instance, says in his essay, Why I Write, that he always knew he “should be a writer.” When he tried to avoid this endeavour from the age of 17 to 24, he knew it went against his “true nature” and that it was inevitable he would eventually “have to settle down and write books.”
Not all of us have such a strong innate inkling to become writers, published or otherwise. Fewer of us have the inclination to write for the sole sake of influencing an entire nation like Whitman did. But as writers we need to have purpose behind our writing. Maybe your motivation is to inspire others through your blog. Perhaps it’s to promote a product you believe in through advertising copy.
The boldest motivation of all is perhaps to write for the sake of writing itself, to write because you cannot live without doing so or simply to write because you want to write. The simplest but most complex motive is to write a journal, because it that represents you and you alone. A journal is something personal, powerful, emotional, so much so you’d probably be very ashamed if anyone got hold of it. You don’t need to be a Whitman or an Orwell to write a journal, needn’t be a poet either. But journaling can be very therapeutic regardless of how good you write. The more you read, as Whitman did, the better you will be able to write.
I know perfectly well my own egotism, And know my omniverous words, and cannot say any less, And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
Whitman also journaled, but if you ask me, Song of Myself seems so personal and so spiritual that it reads like a personal diary. In fact, Whitman’s letters like that those to Emerson also feel very personal, as if Whitman has the confidence and motivation to share his innermost thoughts and opinions with others. He did that so well, it got him in trouble. Many at the time of publishing in 1855 until long after found Leaves of Grassobscene and overly sensual, and its homoerotic connotations are edgy even by today’s standards for many people.
3. Write In A Style That Represents “Them”?
We are long past the days of strict rules and regulations governing how we should and should not write. Some people still object to the use of they instead of him or her when referring to a single person. For example, “one might not want their writing to be considered offensive” rather than “he might not want their writing to be offensive.” But in a world of feminism, such phrasing, in cases where the “he” refers to people is considered offensive. But English lacks a common-gender third person singular pronoun.
Merriam Webster Dictionary quotes a letter by the famous American female poet, Emily Dickinson, who circumvented this lack of pronoun:
Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs, or indeed if they were themself.
To further prove my point about how language is still restrictive for writers not willing to be themselves, look at what Google thinks of Dickinson’s word choice. Thought I will say it doesn’t mind “themselves” in place of “themself.”
Google thinks Dickinson’s word choice is wrong in 2019.
As little as only four days ago on September 23, 2019, Merriam Webster Dictionary added “they” as a nonbinary (gender neutral or non-gender specific) pronoun, Ma. It describes people without using their gender, as Dickinson attempted, or people who do not identify as either male or female.
So screw it, be like Whitman or even Dickinson and use whatever words you deem fit, whether they cause offense or not. Don’t wait for words to be added to the dictionary either. I mean just imagine how many common colloquialisms we use that are found nowhere but Urban Dictionary, which is technically a dictionary but that’s beside the point. To paraphrase the new “they” definition, this “binary” thinking where we see the world from opposing viewpoints with nothing in between limits creativity and imagination.
If you think of a word or phrase that you know makes sense but may be different than common writing or even societal conventions then use it. I mean you should probably check with a friend to make certain its understandable but if “they” think it is then use it, own it, make it a thing. If people find if offensive then let them. Just think of the last time someone wasn’t offended in this world, someone close to you or around you, online or offline. I bet you can’t remember if there ever was such a time.
Whitman’s way of thinking was to write what he thought fit, and I think it requires the aforementioned confidence and motivation to be pulled if in such eloquent fashion as Whitman achieves.
In the stanza below, Whitman reveals an unexpected motivation behind his writing but what that went against many conventions of poetic writing at the time.
Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no more modest than immodest.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
Whitman calls himself “a kosmos,” which means “the sum total of everything,” according to Vocabulary.com. A pretty bold statement to make when the Christian God calls himself Alpha and Omega, meaning everything from A to Z. People in 2019 would find that offensive in 2019 let alone 1855. But Whitman also states his flaws, that he is “fleshy and sensual” and that he is “no more modest than immodest.” He appears to be saying that he is a messenger of a message greater than himself as a flawed human, that he is no different than others, that his ideas come from the universe and thus apply to everyone.
Poets also rarely identify themselves in their poetry but Whitman did, so I wonder what Roland Barthes might have thought of that. Anyway, Whitman’s use of repetition throughout the poem along with his free verse style broke many conventions at the time but that didn’t stop him. If anything, he probably chose to broke them simply because they existed.
Walt Whitman even placed this image of himself at the beginning of Leaves of Grass
But there is a purpose behind them, as suggested with his use of the ellipsis, also found throughout the poem. It seems as if he is so enthusiastic that he cannot contain himself, which can also be seen in the way he often lists words as seen in the quote below. It feels like he is out of breath but continues anyway because poetry can say what speech cannot. Ellipses are used to reveal that words were omitted. In Whitman’s case, ellipses suggest that he cannot express what he wants to or that the ideas contained between them transcend human understanding. So again, if you are going to do something different, make sure there is a purpose behind it.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
As a further example, just look at Whitman’s unique style and thoughts in another short stanza:
Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return. Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
His style evokes biblical nuances with its repetition and phrasing. It seems like Whitman has somehow understood a universal truth about “degradation” and tolerance that can be better expressed by alluding to the bible. After all he was writing to an American and predominant Christian audience, but at the same time him expressing this non-Christian ideas using biblical phrasing might be considered offensive even today. But Whitman clearly did not care because to him, his message was greater than whatever came before it.
Whitman broke with conventions in other ways too, such as his sexual references that even today are edgy for some people:
Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight! We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
He gets edgier by even today standard’s considering the intolerance towards homosexuality seen worldwide:
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
Likewise, Whitman’s sensual depictions of men caused offense during his lifetime, such as:
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band, His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead, The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
Whitman had a unique style, one he owned, a distinctive characteristic that can never be repeated because he both cared and did not care what others thought of his writing. He cared to share a new way of thinking but was no ashamed to do it, as aspects like sexuality are only natural. In a sense, he paved the way for the increased openness in expressions of thought we can exercise and experience today.
Writing Is You
Image from Pexels. You shouldn’t put a picture like this so I out a picture like this.
My point is, if you have an idea, a theory, a concept, or simply want to write how you view some aspect of the universe, don’t be afraid to do so no matter what. Whitman didn’t care and here we are 164 years later talking about that very aspect of his writing and personality. Your thoughts, idea, they’re all yours to use as you see fit. Here is a massive list of books banned by governments from around the world, most of which were censored a long time ago, few which were censored in the 2000s. Write about what you want to write about, write what the world needs to hear, whether what’s how great your new business is or about some fictitious world set on a planet far from here.
We live in a different world today compared to Whitman’s time, one that is more open to new ideas, a world needing expressions of ideas that were not allowed to be uttered until recently. That requires self-confidence, motivation and a style that represents you, as we learned from Whitman.
Perhaps it’s time for us all to express what appears inexpressible. But most of all, write in a technique that is yours and you will stand out from every other in a way that will make them listen to what you have to say. After all, unless you’re writing a private journal, you’re writing for them as much as you are for you.
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