Abiding Images

An abiding image is a lingering picture in your head.

I'm simply jotting down these thoughts related to teaching poetry to freshmen.

A friend recently told me that older movies would show the same image for 10 seconds -- or did he say more than that?

By way of contrast, he said, today's films project images for a far briefer period of time.

The point?

I think poems are much like those older films. Poems can hold and examine images, and add new layers of meaning to images as well.

Jeanne Murray Walker once said that the point of poetry is to help us slow down.

Poems can help us drink in the abiding images and add some new meaning to the world around us.