Duality

Imagery is based on duality. It is the means by which the particular reaches into the universal, where factual detail takes on the resonance of icons. Imagery sets readers’ feet in two worlds, the everyday and the imagined. In this straddle position, they gain a larger vision, what in Lectures on Literature Vladimir Nabokov called “the pleasurable shock of artistic truth.” The poet’s challenge is to ensure that language and experience meet—that word and idea become one.