What is imagery in poetry? Learn the imagery definition and types of imagery, why poets choose to use imagery and view examples of how imagery is used in poetry. Updated: 11/21/2023
Imagery in Poetry | Definition, Usage & Examples
Table of Contents
- Imagery Definition
- Why is Imagery Used in Poetry?
- Types of Imagery
- Imagery Examples in Poetry
- Imagism
- Imagery in Literature
- Lesson Summary
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the five types of imagery?
There are only 3 commonly recognized types of imagery: literal, perceptual, and conceptual. However, imagery can also be used to appeal to the five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound.
What are some examples of imagery?
Examples of imagery include any lines of poetry that evoke the five senses and make readers vividly imagine sights, sounds, textures, and more.
How is imagery used in poetry?
Imagery is used in poetry both to allow readers to visualize what is happening and to create strong emotional ties between reader and text.
Table of Contents
- Imagery Definition
- Why is Imagery Used in Poetry?
- Types of Imagery
- Imagery Examples in Poetry
- Imagism
- Imagery in Literature
- Lesson Summary
What does imagery mean in terms of poetry and literature? Why is imagery used in poetry? Imagery is a literary device that writers use that can help readers emotionally connect to a work. The most commonly understood imagery definition is any part of a poem or other literary work that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell) in a way that creates a vivid and emotionally resonant picture for readers. While the majority of poems use imagery to some extent, some poems make more significant use of it than others. There is actually an entire style of poetry called imagism that emphasizes the use of imagery.
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Why do poets use imagery in poetry? What does this literary device communicate to readers? Understanding how and why imagery is used in poetry can strengthen a poem and make it much richer for readers. It can help communicate an idiosyncratic or unusual idea that the poet has and can help readers understand the poet's perspective fully. Imagery is all about an emotional connection: it is about bringing readers into the poem so that they can almost feel as though they are there. They can understand the poet's perspective and share in the human experience. Alan Bennett put this concept beautifully in his 2004 play, The History Boys:
Hector: The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
A poet or writer who uses imagery well may be able to evoke this experience in readers.
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There are three main types of imagery that are used in poetry. Each one has its own use and its own impact for readers. These types of imagery are literal, perceptual, and conceptual. In many cases, a single image in a poem can be read through a variety of different frameworks.
Literal Imagery
Literal imagery is the simplest way of understanding poetic imagery: as a literal description of an object or sensation. Literal images appeal directly to the five senses and might look something like this:
The October leaves coming down, as if called.
Morning fog through the wild rye beyond the train tracks.
A cigarette. A good sweater. On the sagging porch. While the family sleeps.
These lines come from ''Reasons for Staying'' by Ocean Vuong. While they can and should be read in the context of the broader poem, they can also be read as literal images that draw the reader into the world that Vuong is creating. The visuals of the leaves and fog pair with the smell and taste of a cigarette and the feeling of a good sweater to create a whole image.
Perceptual Imagery
Perceptual imagery, like literal imagery, appeals to the senses. However, it takes the image a step further and is often combined with metaphor or simile to give the image added meaning. For example, the poem ''Someday'' by Mary Oliver discusses many subjects, but its first stanza contains vivid perceptual imagery:
Even the oldest of trees continues its wonderful labor.
Hummingbird lives in one of them.
He's there for the white blossoms, and the secrecy.
The blossoms could be snow, with a dash of pink.
At first the fruit is small and green and hard.
Everything has dreams, hope, ambition.
The personification in this stanza brings the hummingbird and the tree to life. The stanza's central metaphor compares unripe fruit to humans with ambitions and hopes, letting readers see themselves in Oliver's poetry. Mary Oliver is describing human ambition, but she is also describing the ambitions of other inhabitants of the natural world. When an image applies to two or more concepts, it is called conflation.
Conceptual Imagery
If perceptual imagery makes a single metaphorical comparison, conceptual imagery takes that comparison further, often using an image to represent an idea throughout an entire poem. ''Atlas'' by U. A. Fanthorpe is an example of a poem that uses conceptual imagery:
There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes, which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.
This poem compares romantic love to maintaining a house, and even compares the speaker to a house. The imagery in this poem can be found particularly in the lines about brickwork and wiring as well as in evocative phrases like ''rickety elaborate structures'' and ''dryrotten jokes.''
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There are thousands of examples of imagery in poetry; it would be more of a challenge to find a poem that uses no imagery at all. Here are a few imagery examples that have been integrated into poems to great effect, providing an emotional anchor for readers. The images in each poem are bolded for clarity.
''Psalm'' by Dorianne Laux
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Lord, there are creatures in the understory,
snails with whorled backs and silver boots,
trails beetles weave in grass, black rivers
of ants, unbound ladybugs opening their wings,
spotted veils and flame, untamed choirs
of banjo-colored crickets and stained-glass cicadas.
Lord, how shall we count the snakes and frogs
and moths? How shall we love the hidden
and small? Mushrooms beneath leaves
constructing their death domes in silence,
their silken gills and mycelial threads, cap scales
and patches, their warts and pores. And the buried
bulbs that will bloom in spring, pregnant with flower
and leaf, sing Prepare for My Radiance, Prepare
for the Pageantry of My Inevitable Surprise.
These are the queendoms, the spines and horns,
the clustered hearts beating beneath our feet. Lord
though the earth is locked in irons of ice and snow
there are angels in the undergrowth, praise them.
''Instructions on Not Giving Up'' by Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.
''Oranges'' by Mary Oliver
Cut one, the lace of acid
rushes out, spills over your hands.
You lick them, manners don't come into it.
Orange. The first word you have heard that day
enters your mind. Everybody then
does what he or she wants; breakfast is casual.
Slices, quarters, halves, or the whole hand
holding an orange ball like the morning sun
on a day of soft wind and no clouds
which it so often is. 'Oh, I always
want to live like this,
flying up out of the furrows of sleep,
fresh from water and its sheer excitement,
felled as though by a miracle
at this first sharp taste of the day!'
You're shouting, but no one is surprised.
Here, there, everywhere on the earth
thousands are rising and shouting with you,
even those who are utterly silent, absorbed,
their mouths filled with such sweetness.
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Imagism was a literary movement that gained popularity in the early 20th century. It prioritized clear images and in some cases poems that consisted of only images so that they could be maximally evocative without explaining themselves too much for readers. Notable imagist poets include Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and James Joyce. A famous imagist poem is ''In a Station of the Metro'' by Ezra Pound:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The image is the whole of the poem; any emotion that readers apply to it must come from them.
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Imagery is not only used in poetry; it is also important in literature. Books and short stories often use imagery that is relevant to the plot of a story more than imagery that creates an extended conceptual metaphor. Some books use imagery more than others, drawing readers into a rich world. Here are a few excerpts of books that use imagery to trigger readers' emotions:
Salt-corroded frames. Grit-grated deck. We don our gunnysack robes in this perennial dusk. One sculpin-oil lamp hangs at a tilt from the forward berthing bulkhead. Fat-gummed glass. Sputter and fishy reek. In a line, we work our way aft, up the main corridor at a slant.
– We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart
The sun shone through uneven cloud-cover with a bright grey light. Below the basket the stalls and barrows lay like untidy spillage. The city reeked. But today was market day down in Aspic Hole, and the pungent slick of dung-smell and rot that rolled over New Crobuzon was, in these streets, for these hours, improved with paprika and fresh tomato, hot oil and fish and cinnamon, cured meat, banana and onion.
– Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
The supper was delicious. There was home-made crusty bread, hot onion soup, delicious rabbit stew, baked apples in a silver dish, honey, butter the colour of marigolds, a big blue jug of warm mulled claret, and hot roasted chestnuts folded in a napkin.
– The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
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Each of these examples appeals to different senses and gives a different sense of what the world of the story will hold; some are pleasant and some are unpleasant. All of them are powerful and can help make reading a more engaging experience.
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What does imagery mean in poetry? Imagery is a poetic and literary device used to launch readers into an emotional experience. Imagery can appeal to all of the senses, including sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. There are three main types of imagery:
- Literal imagery is any poetic or literary description
- Perceptual imagery uses metaphors to evoke emotions
- Conceptual imagery also uses metaphors and deliberately evokes ideas
If an image is used to reference more than one idea or experience, it is called conflation. When used deliberately, conflation and all other styles of imagery can be remarkably effective.
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Video Transcript
Images in Poems
Let's consider this sentence:
The strawberries were blood-red with ripeness and almost scraped the ground on a long line of wild bushes.
What picture do you see in your mind when you read this? You probably imagined the deep color of the ripe strawberries, the warmth of the summer sun, and perhaps the feeling of the grainy smoothness of the fruit. Imagery in poetry creates similar snapshots in a reader's mind.
Poets use imagery to draw readers into a sensory experience. Images will often provide us with mental snapshots that appeal to our senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.
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In essence, images show us meaning; when we compare the snapshots in our mind to our own memories or experiences, we connect emotionally to the poem.
Imagery can either expose us to new experiences or reveal our own experiences in a new light. Because most poems are brief, a poet has the challenge of creating an entire world for the reader in a few short lines, and images or even the story that arises from a series of images is the most efficient route to this communication.
Examples of Imagery
Because imagery is so foundational to poetry, the canon of literature is chock-full of excellent examples. A master of images, poet Sylvia Plath, revolutionized the poetry world with works like Daddy, where she utilizes harsh Holocaust imagery to dissect her feelings towards her father. Let's take a look at an excerpt:
…Not a God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do…
In this particular excerpt, we can see how individual images provide us with that snapshot - 'the boot in the face' and 'you stand at the blackboard, daddy' are examples of visual images. We can see the boot. We can see the blackboard. However, when we read this series of images together, we gain horrifying emotional impressions of oppression, neglect, and spite.
Taken at one time, Plath's images do conjure up specific snapshots in our minds. However, when taken together, we see that Plath is actually talking about her father, Adolf Hitler, and men in her life in general. When a poet represents several experiences with a series of images or one poem, we call it a conflation.
Let's look at the imagery in the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver for another example:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Completely opposite in tone from Plath's Daddy, Wild Geese is a quiet poem that explores a human's relationship with nature and our similarities to an animal. While most of these images give us a visual experience, 'clear pebbles of the rain' is a description we can use our sense of sound to imagine.
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Also, because Oliver visually moves us across so many landscapes - prairies, deep trees, mountains, and rivers - she has essentially opened the entire world for us by the end of the poem and laid it at our feet.
As you can see, imagery in a poem is the dynamic that determines our experience in reading. We can lash out in anger with Plath over her father and the deep injustice of the Holocaust against the Jews, or we can sit quietly with Oliver and sense how vast the world really is.
Types of Images
Poets use imagery to accomplish different ends and therefore, there are three main types of imagery: literal, perceptual, and conceptual.
Literal imagery is when we should take the snapshots in our minds at face value. We see this straightforward intention in the first stanza of John Updike's poem, A Dog's Death:
She must have been kicked unseen
or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was
beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the
kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words,
'Good dog! Good dog!'…
Perceptual imagery often capitalizes on the five senses for effect and draws on techniques such as metaphor, simile, and symbolism. Perceptual imagery conjures a strong snapshot in our minds, but its main purpose is to represent a certain reality or emotion. At the conclusion of Yusef Komunyakaa's poem, Reminescence, we see an example of metaphor:
…I've seen overturned deathcarts
with their wheels churning
Guadalajara mornings,
but your face will always be
a private country.
Komunyakaa compares his lover's face to a private country. It's a metaphor for a secret vastness of memory for someone he still loves. As you can see, we do not take this country to be literal. It is instead perceptual because we know the private country is in his imagination.
Conceptual imagery represents an entire idea. In Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death, the speaker exits this life with Death in a carriage:
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility…
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It is possible for the categories of literal, perceptual, and conceptual imagery to overlap. With so many different combinations of mental snapshots and emotional connections, it's no wonder that so many poets create a long-lasting and meaningful experience for the reader.
Vocabulary Associated with Imagery in Poetry
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- Imagery: Similar to a snapshot in the reader's mind.
- Sensory: Refers to how imagery appeals to senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.
- Perceptual imagery: Imagery that capitalizes on the five senses for effect and draws on techniques such as metaphor, simile, and symbolism.
Learning Outcomes
As you get to the end of the video, you should have the ability to:
- Explain how imagery is used in poetry
- Recognize examples of imagery within poetry
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