Aphantasic reporting in

Aphantasic reporting in.
What am I supposed to feel when reading poetry and descriptions in novels? Do people really hallucinate while reading?

How much am I missing out if I can't form any kind of mental image?

If I described it you wouldn't be able to imagine it desu

Well, you can try.
What does happen when you read? Do you just start seeing images overlaying the page? Do you just close your eyes and see exactly what you were reading?

Is there even a point in reading descriptive passages if I can't really imagine them?

Aphantasia isn't real, it's you overthinking things.

How is the inability of forming mental images not real? I've just recently what a big deal actual imagination is when reading and I just wanted to know what it felt like. That's it

I don't think I have aphantasia, but people's description of "vividly hallucinating" while reading has always seemed a bit far fetched to me.

Hi, I'm someone who doesn't have aphantasia in a visual sense, but I have discovered that it is possible to unlock new kinds of imagination at arbitrary points in your life and recently managed to achieve a specific form of this. I've found that High poetry uses a completely different kind of imagination from the visual which you can activate with some effort. A lot of people will imagine visual imagery while reading, which I can do quite well, but I found that I can now move past that and imagine things in a purely conceptual/abstract way that is more powerful and direct while requiring less effort once you can do this. It is absolutely necessary to do this if you want to appreciate more advanced forms of poetry, which use combinations of other concepts to suggest ideas/objects that can't be directly seen heard or felt. I'm not sure if you would need to have other imaginative powers as well in order to understand this though.

Assuming you have a visual memory, it's exactly like recalling one, but you can control it. It's usually subconscious, but you can exert active control over it if you really, really want to. It doesn't overlay your field of vision.

Make sense at all?

Basically your brain is deficient. Your conceptual abilities are limited. You can still function normally, but you're mentally handicapped and can probably never really appreciate poetry, not descriptive poetry anyway.

You weren't able to conceptualize abstractly your entire life? I assumed people could just do this naturally.

Hopefully people don't hallucinate while reading. That would mean you were literally seeing something from the book in your room.