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Endoptic imagery

Imagery
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Visual imagery distorted as though seen internally through the eye tissues.

Detailed Definition
Endoptic imagery refers to visual descriptions that evoke internal bodily or neurological phenomena—such as floaters, afterimages, migraines, or dream visions—rather than external scenes; this inward-looking imagery blurs the boundary between perception and physiology, creating a subjective, often uncanny poetic space where the body becomes the landscape, as explored in the somatic poetics of Lucie Brock-Broido or Anne Carson.
Example
Example in poetry:
Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light” uses endoptic imagery—internalized visual perception (“Heavenly Hurt, it gives us”); Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” renders self-perception as “a terrible fish” rising from inner vision; endoptic imagery conveys how the mind processes sensory input subjectively; in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot writes “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” turning mundane objects into internal symbols; contemporary poet Ocean Vuong describes seeing his mother’s face “in the steam of rice”—a culturally inflected endoptic image; this technique blurs external reality and psychological projection.
Additional Notes
Endoptic imagery describes visions seen with eyes closed (e.g., phosphenes, dreams); internal and subjective—use to explore consciousness or meditative states.
Also Known As
Internal vision imagery Subjective sight pictures Inner eye images Entoptic figures
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