imagery

Chapter 4
We live in a world that has different scenes such as spring days, winter
days etc.
Through each of these scenes, we get a specific experience.
For example, we have some clues and experiences about winter days
specialized to them including the sound of owl, icicles, the frozen milk
or hands that are blue. These are our experience of winter days.
For example, we can see the icicles, we can hear the sound of owl, we
can smell the milk that’s frozen, we can touch our blue hands etc.
Poetic imagery is a description of sth or a person that includes people 5
Senses so as to evoke their emotions and feelings.
 A specific day

Involves our senses

That senses become our experience of that day

The poets utilize our 5 senses indirectly in their poems

To be sensuous and people can interact with them.
 They also use rhythms and music directly.

So, a poem is the imagination of our

experience senses
Through special music and rhythms.
as we have different senses, there are different poetic imageries. Each of imageries
refers to a specific sense.

When an image shows a sound, it is auditory imagery.

Like the sound of owl in winter days

When an image shows a smell, it is olfactory imagery.
When an image shows a taste, it is gustatory imagery.
When an image shows touch, it is tactile imagery.

Like heat and cold.

Or like hardness and softness.

 When an image shows an internal sensation, it is organic imagery.

Such as hunger, thirst

And fatigue.
When an image shows a movement or tension in muscles, it is kinesthetic imagery.
among them, visual imagery is most common one in poems.

Like seeing the icicles.

 LETS READ
SOME POEMS
Meeting at night
By Robert Browning
Page 760
 For example, this is a visual imagery. It conveys the shapes and colors of
different things he saw at that night.
This poem is like someone’s voice in his/her head about the features of the
night when he/she went to meet his/her lover.
This poem is about love. However, it never mentions “love”.
It is generally about a lover’s journey to meet his sweetheart. This journey is described
vividly to make us see and hear what exactly the lover saw and heard.
Page 761
 This poem is written to speak about the experience of seeing the world
After a night with sweetheart.
Robert Brown used parallelism and rhythms without a metrical pattern.
He states “responsibility” beside “relationship” and “nature” in this poem.
To make an image vivid, we don’t need to describe it totally. We just must bring some
sharp details for the image so as to involve the reader’s imagination.
Imagery is an effective way to evoke reader’s emotions. However, we cant evaluate a
poem’s quality or quantity by its images or senses for sense impression is only one of
the elements of experience.
 It conveys emotions: imagery makes a theory or emotion tangible to
the reader using their senses.

imagery It suggests ideas: imagery creates an idea or image in readers’ heads

using vivid descriptions..

It evokes sense experience: imagery evokes readers sense

experience such as seeing, hearing etc using vivid descriptions.