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Poetry is a journey of the imagination that we experience in words.

It is the creative expression of imagery in verse and imagery is what gives poetry its soul. The pen of the poet shapes imaginative language into a vivid picture, which creates powerful energy and thus appeals to the reader’s senses.

The key to using images in a poem is to shape them to produce interiorized responses through which the reader of a poem experiences human images through the words. In writing poems and using images a poet should “show” instead of “tell” because readers of poetry all happen to live in the state of Missouri.

Language is a medium of expression for the imagination; whether that be the language of words, such as are used in poetry, or the language of silent images used in visual art.

In poetry there exists a deep knowing that precedes language, wherein the poet becomes an artist who creates a work of art, which is heard and experienced by the reader as “picture sounds.”

In this sense, poetic imagery is essentially a “painted poem” that speaks to the reader and is heard. Although you can write a successful poem without the use of imagery, the best poems come alive through the use of such imaginative devices as similes, metaphors, allegories and other symbols used in poetry.

A poem’s images are especially crucial today because poetry competes with TV, DVD’s, movies, and video for a reader’s attention. When poetic images are used successfully, a spiritual dynamic is created within the poem which has both personal and universal appeal. The poet who writes the poem uses the images to “spiritualize matter.” The reader of the poem experiences the created images as “materialized spirit.”

*Read Michael Hickey’s poem online at www.marconews.com/news/etc

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Michael Hickey is a local writer and poet. His book, “Get Wisdom,” is published by Xlibris Div. Random House Publishing and is available at 1-888-795-4274 Ext. 822, at WWW.Xlibris.com, or your local bookstore. E-mail Mike Hickey at Mikehic@nii.net.

IMAGINATION by Michael Hickey

Imagination, that foggy-like mirror,

Reflects creative disorder of mind;

Gives wings to thoughts of discovery

So new realities will loose and unbind.

This resourceful whimsy-invention,

Produces ideas of novel construction,

While paying no heed to convention,

Previous patterns, or formal instruction.

We then envision new possibilities,

Wider horizons; with fresh perspectives,

See what’s born without probabilities,

Or constraint which space and time gives.

Using the eyes of our inner soul,

Mind sees fancy transcend reason,

As desire for dream-enhanced goal,

Creates mental picture out of season.

Our unconscious orients to future,

Seeing not what is, but might be,

Intersects at desire and reason,

Bridging perception with reality.

Our mind roams free and unfenced,

An unshaped, unmodified power,

Imagination then becomes reality,

At inspiration’s birth-giving hour.