Writing with the Image

The image is typically treated as one tool among many in the poet’s toolbox. You use an image, to make a point, to ornament an idea. But images are really the building blocks of poetry—not an ornament, but the structure itself. In this class, we’ll study the work of Jenny Xie, a poet who shows how powerful images can be, when they stand on their own, asking us to find connections between them; or, alternately, to pause on each image, savoring its particular pungency. And we’ll talk about practical strategies for putting the image at the center of our own writing. What kind of poem emerges when your images are allowed to assemble into unpredictable, unexpected constellations, when your images are magnetized by each other?

TOBY ALTMAN is the author of two books, Discipline Park (Wendy’s Subway, 2022) and Arcadia, Indiana (Plays Inverse, 2017). He recently received a 2021 Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has held residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and MacDowell, where he was the 2020 Stephanie and Robert Olmstead Fellow. His poems can be found in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Lana Turner, and other journals and anthologies; his articles and essays can or will be found in Contemporary Literature, English Literary History, and Jacket2. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in English from Northwestern University. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Beloit College.