Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett exhibits an ability to lead the reader to conclusions about an image just before he pulls the rug out from under him by changing the cliché or the common concept of an image. For example, in his poem “Wonderful Things” Padgett writes, “Yes I think of you” aww how cute, “with very little in mind.” What seemed to be a complement was in fact a remark on how little of my mind you actually require. Again he misleads the reader when he writes, “Straight for the edge / Of a manicured fingernail.” Here Padgett toys with the image in the mind of the reader. The edge of something seems like an appropriate phrase for a precipice not a fingernail. He writes in “Big Bluejay Composition”, “the shadow of a doubt / tiptoes down the hall,” as if the shadow of a doubt (being purely a concept) is an actual shadow, and that shadows even tiptoe. The phrase comes unexpected upon the reader.
Padgett does this in order to switch the preconceived images of the mind with new images. These new images break free from the culturally semi-determined clichés of the reader, evoking new totally indeterminate images.