Party-games. Poetry. Vivid Prose

The touchstone of "image"

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

I started out to write this post for the poets in our midst. But why should poets have all the fun and games?

With poetry, people’s thoughts veer quickly to “image,” but “image” applies to all vivid writing.

You remember the “telephone” party game: share a story at one end of a line of kids who each share it, whispering to the next in line… and the last kid says it aloud. To discover what comes through in the telling, and what doesn’t.

Often writing feels like that. (And makes me feel as if I’m not quite eleven.) We start out by whispering to the one next to us. What comes out in the end? How do our ideas transmit?