Timothy Green
@timothygreen.bsky.social
380 followers 110 following 130 posts
editor of @rattlepoetry | thoughts my own
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timothygreen.bsky.social
Attn: Houston Poets! There are a few slots left for our Hot Haibun workshop this August. Spend two intensive afternoons diving into the form with me and Katie Dozier!
inprinthouston.org
timothygreen.bsky.social
In this week's episode of The Poetry Space_ with @katiedozier.bsky.social, two of my favorite poets go head to head in another date nite duel: Stephen Dunn vs. Kay Ryan. Three rounds. Three random poems. Lots of funny outfits.

Listen here to find out who won: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
timothygreen.bsky.social
3/ Killed in action during WWI at 34, Hulme left a small but mighty legacy. His bold ideas endure, proving a few poems can change everything. Learn more about rest of the Imagist legacy on this week's episode of The Poetry Space_:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
ep. 104 - The Imagists
Podcast Episode · The Poetry Space_ · 06/13/2025 · 55m
podcasts.apple.com
timothygreen.bsky.social
2/ Hulme wanted poetry be “hard and dry,” free of romantic fluff. His influence on Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others cemented modernist verse, turning words into crisp, photographic images.
timothygreen.bsky.social
T.E. Hulme, poet and visionary, founded the Imagist movement in early 1900s London, crafting a sharp, vivid style that reshaped modern poetry. His life, though, was cut tragically short. 1/
timothygreen.bsky.social
Thanks, Matthew, good one to bring up—I don't think we've read that on the podcast before! Also good suggestion!
timothygreen.bsky.social
10/ Another great little Imagist poem, "Fog" by Carl Sandburg:
timothygreen.bsky.social
Mike White's "NASCAR" from Rattle 32 is the first to come to mind—note the way the triple-metaphor relies on the immediacy of the image of the dog: rattle.com/nascar-by-mi...
rattle.com
timothygreen.bsky.social
8/ What's your favorite use of imagery in a poem? Share some in the comments and we'll share them on the next episode of The Poetry Space_! I'll add some more too.
timothygreen.bsky.social
7/ Images are processed more quickly and permanently than the other senses we can evoke—and they function most effectively in the symbolic realm where the wisdom of our holistic right-brains reside. Images are the stuff of dreams, and dreams are the stuff of poetry.
timothygreen.bsky.social
6/ The Imagists—Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Ezra Pound, etc.—recognized this, and taught us all to be visual writers ever since.
timothygreen.bsky.social
5/ We read body language, we remember subtle differences in faces, and our recognition of visual symmetry is the foundation to our sense of beauty itself. Our brains care so much about vision that we evolved whites in our eyes just so that we can see what others are seeing.
timothygreen.bsky.social
4/ As scavenging hunter-gatherers, we relied primarily on sight for threat-detection and food acquisition, and honed those tools even further as a key component of group social structure.
timothygreen.bsky.social
3/ Why is imagery such an important element in poetry? Around 40% of of human cerebral cortex is devoted to image processing—more than all the other senses combined.
timothygreen.bsky.social
2/ That painting is Charles Demuth's "The Figure 5 in Gold," inspired by one of the great William Carlos Williams poems:
timothygreen.bsky.social
Imagism was a relatively brief trend in poetry, and maybe that was because it taught such singularly valuable lesson: even in poetry, imagery is king. 1/🧵
timothygreen.bsky.social
Q: What literary publishers are especially modern and forward-thinking? For example, I love they way @onlypoemsmag.bsky.social focuses on community. @atticusreview.bsky.social is moving to the blockchain. Who else out there is thinking way ahead of everyone else?
timothygreen.bsky.social
Wonderful suggestion, thanks!
timothygreen.bsky.social
7/ That's my perspective, anyway. But I'm curious what everyone things about spirituality in poetry. What is the most spiritual poem to you? I'll add more examples throughout the day.
timothygreen.bsky.social
6/ But any poem can be seen as the product of this kind of attention. The poets job is to notice their own attention, and to bring forward its complexity into our working vocabulary. It doesn't matter what the poems are about.

rattle.com/the-play-of-...
The Play of Lovers by Colette Inez - Rattle: Poetry
Pears soft to the thumb, wine.
rattle.com
timothygreen.bsky.social
4/ To me, poetry is an ecstatic conversation with the deep mystery of our own existence. There are things we can know before we know them, somehow, and art is the process of pulling that symbolic, gnostic wisdom into the model of the world we inhabit.
timothygreen.bsky.social
3/ If you've been following anything I do, including my discussion with Li-Young Lee last weekend, you know that I think of poetry as a spiritual practice even though I don't adhere to any religion.

youtube.com/live/OrXBGgs...
Li-Young Lee | Rattlecast 292
YouTube video by Rattle Poetry
youtube.com