Imagery is often seen as central to poetry, but it often comes into conflict with the poem’s plot, with its clarity, and even with its sense of reality. But poems can exist as much in the realm of image as they do in autobiographical detail, creating emotion and effect through the narrative of the image as opposed to the confession. In these poems, it is often the gaps between images that draw readers along so they fill in the disjunction with the like/as/is of simile and metaphor.
Over the course of eight weeks we will draft together poems based on telling a story through images, and investigate how image narratives are used by poets like John Berryman, Lisa Olstein, Jack Gilbert, and Olena Kalytiak Davis.
Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Believer, Redactions, Bennington Review, and Best American Poetry. His book of poems, City of Regret won the Zone 3 First Book Award. A former editor for Gulf Coast and a current editor for Reckoning, he currently lives and teaches in Houston.