Deep image is a term coined by U.S. poets Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly in the second issue of Trobar in 1961. They used it to describe poetry written by them and by Diane Wakoski and Clayton Eshleman.
In creating the term, Rothenberg was inspired by the Spanish cante jondo ("deep song"), especially the work of Federico García Lorca and by the symbolist theory of correspondences.
In general, deep image poems are resonant, stylized and heroic in tone. Longer poems tend to be catalogues of free-standing images.
The deep image group was short-lived in the manner that Kelly and Rothenberg used.
It was later redeveloped by Robert Bly and used by many, such as Galway Kinnell and James Wright. The redevelopment relied on being concrete, not abstract, and to let the images make the experience and to let the images and experience generate the meanings. This new style of Deep Image tended to be narrative, but was often lyrical.
Famous quotes containing the words deep and/or image:
“My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing a Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)