No Images

It would be an oversimplification to classify William Waring Cuney’s poem as free verse. It appears not to follow conventional expectations for prosody. The lines are irregular in length, do not follow any rhythmic pattern, and do not abide by any conventional notion of rhyming (end rhymes, slant rhymes, or near rhymes). Yet the poem is anything but free verse—if free verse means associative, as if the poet simply follows a train of thought and then structures lines to resemble poetry. 

Cuney’s first love was music. Like lines of music, “No Images” happens most immediately in the ear. It should be read aloud, or even better sung. Cuney composed the poem in his late teens when he harbored ambitions to be a classical singer. He had discovered both blues and the earliest expressions of jazz in college and then more so when he moved to New York. To embody the feel of song, the poem uses the pronoun “she” to create a unified sonic feel, a kind of refrain with its lingering “sh” sounds and its sweet, luscious long “e” inviting soulful delivery. Listening to Nina Simone sing her composition based on the poem testifies to this rich aural effect.