From image to image

Abstract

Fifty years ago, image played a matricial role in Portuguese poetry. In many different ways, poems valued forms of discursive experimentation where image was a source of knowledge, or even epiphany. Vision and insight were evaluated (Fiama) and, in other cases, visioning and the crisis of vision were combined (Luiza Neto Jorge). The aim was to think about “the core of the images” (again, Fiama) or to wait for “the gift of a single image”, as Herberto Helder would later write in one of his poems. Looking back, recalling the years of Poesia 61, Gastão Cruz would sum up this inflexion in a few words: “we thought poetry was fed by images”. Considering the countless meanings of the word “image”, it is worth asking what these images were. What was the reason behind their significance? How did they work? What worlds were they supposed to find? These are the questions I will try to address, focusing on the “profuse”, plural, condition of the poetic image even when it is thought as a single image (in the singular).