Imagery In Patricia Clark's Beyond The Lamberton Creek

Throughout this poem, Patricia Clark finds the challenging things that appear small; she connects them to beautiful imagery, in a sense, giving hope in a situation where there isn't always. My favorite use of imagery is “Beyond the Lamberton Creek, August slow and flat”. Not a ripple or a rill.” It puts this image in your head of a completely still creek; it is beyond the natural, and it ties into the image of a family who are all so similar that their personalities flow together like a still river, but then you add the “black sheep,” and that’s when it begins to ripple. There is sadness shown through her choices in imagery—not negativity, but sadness. Clark chose to use a ripple in a creek, which has positive, peaceful connotations, instead