Thanks for sharing your experience—aphantasia is such a fascinating topic. I’m curious, have you ever taken the VVIQ or done any imagery-based tasks to explore the vividness (or absence) of mental images? Sometimes it’s tricky to separate low vividness from no imagery at all, especially since many people expect visualization to feel like a movie or VR in their minds.
For example, if you close your eyes, can you describe the details of your childhood bedroom or a familiar face? Even if you can’t “see” it, do you know where things are? I’d love to hear more about how you’ve explored this—how did you come to the conclusion that your experience is true aphantasia rather than just low-level imagery?
Yes I started with the VVIQ a year or so ago. Zero. Then I started reading about it and reviewing (to the extent I could) my own life. What I "remembered" were the photographs I'd seen multiple times, not what I saw myself.
I'm also aphanastic. I've always been a big reader, but poetry left me cold until I read "No Man Is an Island" on a busy London tube a few years ago and it hit me right between the eyes.
Since then I've been casting about for poets who I enjoy, and Robert Frost and Gerard Manley Hopkins are probably my two favourites I've come across so far. I love the Hayden poem too, will add him to my to-read list. "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering" - love this line, perhaps pushing it too far to think that it's because it evokes a sound rather than an image?
Of course, two aphanastic people enjoying the same poets isn't conclusive, but it seems plausible and incredibly interesting that aphantasia could correlate with enjoyment of particular poets/writers.
I was flicking through a Seamus Heaney book recently, and Limbo grabbed me in a way that other poems didn't. I wonder what you think of Heaney and Limbo?
Oh my and here I thought Mid-Term Break was the saddest Heaney poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57041/mid-term-break. I didn't know Limbo and I am not sure I should thank you for it since it brought such melancholy but thank you.
How long have you known you had no mind's eye? I've been in conversation with Adam Zeman about language and poetry and aphantasia and I think the science is so new there are so many directions it could go...
My adult daughter has aphantasia. I have no interior dialogue. There are so many kinds of neurodivergence that I wonder we can assume anything about how a "regular person" thinks.
So fascinating! Yes -- I think the more we understand about variation in human visual (and other sensory) processing the more we will challenge all of our assumptions about how "humans" respond.
Like Henry, I am actually not crazy about the Williams poem, by which I guess I mean it doesn't move me - but I find it very useful. It's actually (as you show) more about how the operations of language are revealed in the line breaks than it is about the image, on which we focused when we talked because we were talking about aphantasia. First you have a "wheel," then you have a "wheel/barrow," which, I insist, IS, or becomes, a wheelbarrow, but broken open then put back together again. (If you don't have aphantasia, a wheelbarrow is what you end up with, after the wheel and the wheel/barrow, however it is you assemble that.) "Rain/water" works the same way, which might lead us to expect that "white/chickens will also - but of course it doesn't!
I am full-out nuts for the Hayden poem, which I have by heart and which breaks me right open. I don't visualize the cracks in the hands, though - I feel them in my hands, as open wounds. This is also an image, only not for me a visual one.
Do you know "The Slave Is Gone," Jericho Brown and Brionne Janae's great podcast about the TV show DICKINSON? Jericho has a great aside in one episode in which he wonders what the abstract and thinky Dickinson might have thought about our obsession with the image--
Sorry to run on! So much fun, still chatting with you now, as if over red wine, stroganoff, and beets (which bring taste-images to me, as well as visual ones.)
I never liked that Williams poem, at all. But you have made me read it quite differently. "So much depends". That line invites your alternative reading. Like one of those pictures you can see both ways. I now read it, one way, as saying that the chickens are upon the red wheel which is barrow-glazed with rain (ie the rain drops are mounded, the wheel is heaped with the fresh wet light), beside the white, which is, presumably, the reflections of the chickens in the puddles. I much prefer this reading!
Yes! I read poems backward too sometimes, as if they're in Hebrew. Or up and down. It isn't about sense but organization, for me. I looked for a wheelbarrow image but they were all too literal so I went with the trout.
Very interesting line of thought, about the consequences of aphantasia for cognitive style. Makes me wonder now, I never thought about it: why do I love some poetry but can't connect at all with some other? Definitely know now why I could never manage to even read the realists like Stendhal or Zola with any kind of joy. The descriptive effusions were unbearable to me. And agreed, I can't believe just 2% are supposed to be like us.
FWIW I’ve written several blog/newsletter posts about reading fiction and poetry while not being able to visualize. This one is about William Empson and the criticism of poetry.
Thanks for sharing your experience—aphantasia is such a fascinating topic. I’m curious, have you ever taken the VVIQ or done any imagery-based tasks to explore the vividness (or absence) of mental images? Sometimes it’s tricky to separate low vividness from no imagery at all, especially since many people expect visualization to feel like a movie or VR in their minds.
For example, if you close your eyes, can you describe the details of your childhood bedroom or a familiar face? Even if you can’t “see” it, do you know where things are? I’d love to hear more about how you’ve explored this—how did you come to the conclusion that your experience is true aphantasia rather than just low-level imagery?
Yes I started with the VVIQ a year or so ago. Zero. Then I started reading about it and reviewing (to the extent I could) my own life. What I "remembered" were the photographs I'd seen multiple times, not what I saw myself.
I enjoyed this Hollis. Somewhat relatedly, you may like the essay I just published, "The AI poem you love is still slop." https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/quality-ai-slop
What a fascinating post.
I'm also aphanastic. I've always been a big reader, but poetry left me cold until I read "No Man Is an Island" on a busy London tube a few years ago and it hit me right between the eyes.
Since then I've been casting about for poets who I enjoy, and Robert Frost and Gerard Manley Hopkins are probably my two favourites I've come across so far. I love the Hayden poem too, will add him to my to-read list. "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering" - love this line, perhaps pushing it too far to think that it's because it evokes a sound rather than an image?
Of course, two aphanastic people enjoying the same poets isn't conclusive, but it seems plausible and incredibly interesting that aphantasia could correlate with enjoyment of particular poets/writers.
I was flicking through a Seamus Heaney book recently, and Limbo grabbed me in a way that other poems didn't. I wonder what you think of Heaney and Limbo?
https://allpoetry.com/poem/11030643-Limbo-by-Seamus-Heaney
Oh my and here I thought Mid-Term Break was the saddest Heaney poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57041/mid-term-break. I didn't know Limbo and I am not sure I should thank you for it since it brought such melancholy but thank you.
How long have you known you had no mind's eye? I've been in conversation with Adam Zeman about language and poetry and aphantasia and I think the science is so new there are so many directions it could go...
I've known for a few years. Doesn't tend to bother me, but I'd be interested to hear if other people have been able to train/develop their minds eye.
Would love to read more posts on poetry and aphantasia!
My adult daughter has aphantasia. I have no interior dialogue. There are so many kinds of neurodivergence that I wonder we can assume anything about how a "regular person" thinks.
So fascinating! Yes -- I think the more we understand about variation in human visual (and other sensory) processing the more we will challenge all of our assumptions about how "humans" respond.
Like Henry, I am actually not crazy about the Williams poem, by which I guess I mean it doesn't move me - but I find it very useful. It's actually (as you show) more about how the operations of language are revealed in the line breaks than it is about the image, on which we focused when we talked because we were talking about aphantasia. First you have a "wheel," then you have a "wheel/barrow," which, I insist, IS, or becomes, a wheelbarrow, but broken open then put back together again. (If you don't have aphantasia, a wheelbarrow is what you end up with, after the wheel and the wheel/barrow, however it is you assemble that.) "Rain/water" works the same way, which might lead us to expect that "white/chickens will also - but of course it doesn't!
I am full-out nuts for the Hayden poem, which I have by heart and which breaks me right open. I don't visualize the cracks in the hands, though - I feel them in my hands, as open wounds. This is also an image, only not for me a visual one.
Do you know "The Slave Is Gone," Jericho Brown and Brionne Janae's great podcast about the TV show DICKINSON? Jericho has a great aside in one episode in which he wonders what the abstract and thinky Dickinson might have thought about our obsession with the image--
Sorry to run on! So much fun, still chatting with you now, as if over red wine, stroganoff, and beets (which bring taste-images to me, as well as visual ones.)
I never liked that Williams poem, at all. But you have made me read it quite differently. "So much depends". That line invites your alternative reading. Like one of those pictures you can see both ways. I now read it, one way, as saying that the chickens are upon the red wheel which is barrow-glazed with rain (ie the rain drops are mounded, the wheel is heaped with the fresh wet light), beside the white, which is, presumably, the reflections of the chickens in the puddles. I much prefer this reading!
Yes! I read poems backward too sometimes, as if they're in Hebrew. Or up and down. It isn't about sense but organization, for me. I looked for a wheelbarrow image but they were all too literal so I went with the trout.
Hopkins is a much better poet so he deserves the image!
Very interesting line of thought, about the consequences of aphantasia for cognitive style. Makes me wonder now, I never thought about it: why do I love some poetry but can't connect at all with some other? Definitely know now why I could never manage to even read the realists like Stendhal or Zola with any kind of joy. The descriptive effusions were unbearable to me. And agreed, I can't believe just 2% are supposed to be like us.
FWIW I’ve written several blog/newsletter posts about reading fiction and poetry while not being able to visualize. This one is about William Empson and the criticism of poetry.
https://letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2023/08/26/poetic-imagery-william.html