Imagery and Metaphorical Devices

Very often the language of poetry is made more intense through the use of metaphorical
devices, which can add layers of meaning to a poem beyond the literal sense of the words on
the page. You are likely to encounter several of these linguistic devices in the poetry you
study. You may sometimes see these devices referred to as 'figurative language' or see
individual examples called figures of speech. These are blanket terms used to describe the
individual features that we will now look at. This kind of language use, in which the words
require an intellectual and/or emotional response beyond their literal meaning, is also called
representational language and the specific features are called representational imagery
features.
Imagery is an author's use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to his or her work.
It appeals to human senses to deepen the reader's understanding of the work. Powerful forms
of imagery engage all of the senses and use metaphors to express ideas and concepts.
There are seven types of imagery, each corresponding to a sense, feeling, or action:

Visual imagery pertains to sights, and allows the reader to visualize objects, events,
actions, or places. E.g.: the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene

Auditory imagery pertains to sounds. (This kind of imagery may come in the form
of onomatopoeia). E.g. the pleasant whining of a mandolin.

Olfactory imagery pertains to odours. E.g. in vials of ivory and coloured glass,
lurked her strange synthetic perfumes...

Gustatory imagery pertains to flavours. E.g. they had a hot gammon, and they
asked me in to dinner.

Tactile imagery pertains to the sense of touch. E.g. endeavours to engage her in
caresses [...] exploring hands encounter no defence.

Kinaesthetic imagery pertains to movements. E.g. so we moved, and they, in a

formal pattern, along the empty alley, into the box circle.

Organic imagery or subjective imagery, pertains to personal experiences of a

character's body, including hunger, thirst, and fatigue. E.g. wind in and out of
unwholesome lungs

Images can work in several ways in the mind of the reader. For example, an image can be
used literally to describe something, as in Wordsworth's description of taking a boat out on to
the lake at night, as the boat moves forward
leaving behind her still, on either side,
small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
of sparkling light ...
Wordsworth, Prelude Bk I

This creates a literal image as we can picture the scene in our minds from the way in which
Wordsworth describes it. Non-literal, figurative or representational images can be created
when the thing being described is compared to something else. In a simile, the comparison is
made very clear by the poet using the words 'like' or 'as'. Often the elements being compared
are essentially different in nature, but they come together in the poet's perception and
ultimately in the reader's perception. Here are some examples of the simile in action:
Her goodly eyes like Sapphires shining bright ...
Her cheeks like apples which the sun hath redded,
Her lips like cherries charming men to bite.
Edmund Spenser
The metaphor is another representational device that poets often use, and with which you are
familiar. In some ways a metaphor is like a simile in that it too creates a comparison.
However, the comparison is less direct than the simile in that it does not include the terms
'like' or 'as', but often describes the subject as being the thing to which it is compared. For
example, in Simon Armitage's poem The Anaesthetist he describes the anaesthetist entering
the operating theatre:
Hard to believe him when he trundles in,
Scrubbed up and squeaky clean, manoeuvering
A handcart of deep-sea diving gear.
Simon Armitage
Of course, Armitage does not literally mean that the anaesthetist enters pushing a cart piled
high with deep-sea diving gear - it is meant metaphorically. The look of the anaesthetist's
equipment reminds Armitage of deep-sea diving gear.

1.

Identify and explain three images in the following extract, which is taken from a poem
describing the view from the Post Office Tower, London.
On a roof southward, broken concrete
Between two chimneys blossoms
In a line of washing, an old man
On a hard chair, his hands in his lap,
Stares at nothing linen flowers
Tugging to be free. And like some fine insect
Posed on a blackened outcrop of stone
A young man mends an aerial far down the central haze,
Straddles a fire-escape in ice-blue jeans
And striped shirt, arms bare to the shoulder and is hair
Is blown across his arms
As he moves the metal arms
Into the path of their messages.
-

And all that grace to dwindle to

a faded dressing-gown, a kitchen chair in the sun.

2. Study this paragraph:

A stout man with a pink face wears dingy white flannel trousers, a blue coat with a pink
handkerchief showing, and a straw hat much too small for him, perched at the back of his
head. He plays the guitar. A little chap in white canvas shoes, his face hidden under a felt hat
like a broken wing, breathes into a flute; and a tall thin fellow, with bursting over-ripe button
boots, draws ribbonslong, twisted, streaming ribbonsof tune out of a fiddle. They stand,
unsmiling, but not serious, in the broad sunlight opposite the fruit-shop; the pink spider of a
hand beats the guitar, the little squat hand, with a brass-and-turquoise ring, forces the
reluctant flute, and the fiddlers arm tries to saw the fiddle in two.

What do the images in the above paragraph suggest are the writers feelings about the
musicians and their performance?

Another kind of representational device frequently used by poets is personification. This is

really a kind of metaphor in which the attributes of a person are given to either abstract or
non-human things.

In this example from Wilfred Owen's poem Futility, the sun is

personified:
Futility

Move him into the sun Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Wilfred Owen

Closely associated with the idea of personification is that of apostrophe. This term describes
a feature where an inanimate thing is addressed as if it were animate, those absent are
addressed as if present, or the dead are addressed as if alive. In this example, John Donne
uses apostrophe when he addresses Death as a person:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so

Two other representational features that you might encounter in your poetic studies are
metonymy and synecdoche. Metonymy is the figure of speech where the term for one thing
is substituted for the term for another thing with which it has become closely associated. For
example, if we say 'The pen is mightier than the sword', then 'pen' and 'sword' are
metonymies for written, intellectual ideas and military or brute force, respectively. If we use
the term 'the Crown' to mean royalty we are similarly using a metonym. A synecdoche is a
figure of speech in which part of something is used to represent the whole. For example,
Shakespeare uses this device in the following line:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it

The 'hand' here means the whole person who wrote the line.

Another metaphorical device that poets often use is that of symbolism, sometimes drawing in
commonly recognized symbols and sometimes inventing their own. In basic terms a symbol
is simply a device whereby a word or phrase represents something else - for example the
colour white could be used to represent peace. Symbolism in poetry can be very complex,
with some poems operating on two levels, the literal and the symbolic. Sometimes in order to
fully understand the significance of a poem it is necessary to understand the symbolic
importance of some of the ideas or images used.