Time and the Figurative with Karen Solie

“How — with no preparation — can this singular, short-lived event constituted by the appearance of an unusual poetic image, react on other minds and in other hearts, despite all the barriers of common sense, all the disciplined schools of thought, content in their immobility?”

– Gaston Bachelard

If the image is the instant, “the frozen present,” as Charles Simic writes, and metaphor the realm of myth and the past, the simile is “the key to the kingdom.” Through examples of poems, and with reference to writing on the poetics of image, this workshop with Karen will explore the magic of the figurative – its seeming ability to stop time, to expand the moment, to invoke simultaneously the past and present and gesture toward an uncertain future. It is a magic that allows readers of poems, as Li Po wrote, to be “alive twice.” The session will include discussion and…