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Ideogram

Philosophy
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

An ideogram is a written symbol representing an idea or concept directly, not phonetically. It suggests meaning through visual or associative logic.

Detailed Definition
In poetry, ideogrammatic writing (per Pound) juxtaposes concrete images to evoke abstract meaning without explicit statement. Philosophically, it trusts reader intuition, rejecting discursive logic for epiphanic insight—making poetry a space where thought arises from sensory collision, not exposition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” juxtaposes faces and petals as ideogram; William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” uses concrete image to evoke dependency; H.D.’s Imagist poems fuse Greek myth and modern emotion through visual ideograms; Basil Bunting’s Brigg Flatts uses Northumbrian landscape as ideogram of memory; C.D. Wright’s “Short” presents encounter as ideogram of race and care; Gary Snyder’s “Riprap” treats trail-building as ideogram of poetic craft.
Additional Notes
Ideogram (Pound) conveys meaning through visual/logical association, not sound. In poetry, it appears as juxtaposed images: Pound’s metro faces/petals, Williams’s wheelbarrow. Students should read for implicit logic between concrete details. Related to montage, ekphrasis, and Chinese characters. Professors can teach it as anti-discursive poetic method.
Also Known As
Ideograph Logogram
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