Conference Paper Title -- Inna

Carry Through: Designed Experience through Object and Sound

I would like to look at some poems that are considered Imagist (early 20th century poetry based on the description of an image), like William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" (see below) and find contemporary poets who also describe objects and sounds objectively as the main source of feeling, atmosphere, and drama in the work. I am curious about the degree to which a poet describes an object or sound and the technique the poet uses to point to that object's or sound's importance. I would also like to investigate the purposefulness of the order in which each object in a still image is introduced, because we can only learn about the atmosphere of a poem little by little, and sometimes writers use this to surprise us in subtle ways.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams