Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
In poetry, imagery is a vivid and vibrant form of description that appeals to readers’ senses
and imagination. Despite the word’s connotation, “imagery” is not focused solely on visual
representations or mental images—it refers to the full spectrum of sensory experiences,
including internal emotions and physical sensations.
Imagery allows the reader to clearly see, touch, taste, smell, and hear what is happening—and
in some cases even empathize with the poet or their subject. Whether it’s the classical sonnets
of Shakespeare or the searing social commentary from poets in the African diaspora like
Langston Hughes, imagery beautifies and intensifies the poetic work.
There are seven main types of imagery in poetry. Poets create imagery by using figures of
speech like simile (a direct comparison between two things); metaphor (comparison between
two unrelated things that share common characteristics); personification (giving human
attributes to nonhuman things); and onomatopoeia (a word that mimics the natural sound of a
thing).
• Visual imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense
of sight by describing something the speaker or narrator of the poem sees. It may
include colors, brightness, shapes, sizes, and patterns. To provide readers with visual
imagery, poets often use metaphor, simile, or personification in their description
In this poem, inspired by a walk Wordsworth took with his sister, the poet uses simile to
compare his lonely wandering to the aimless flight of a cloud. Additionally, he personifies the
daffodils, which dance as if a group of humans.
• Auditory imagery. This form of poetic imagery appeals to the reader’s sense of
hearing or sound. It may include music and other pleasant sounds, harsh noises, or
silence. In addition to describing a sound, the poet might also use a sound device like
onomatopoeia, or words that imitate sounds, so reading the poem aloud recreates the
auditory experience. In John Keats’ short 1820 poem “To Autumn”—the final poem he
wrote before abandoning the craft because poetry wasn’t paying the bills—he
concludes with auditory imagery:
Keats personifies fall as if it is a musician with a song to sing, and then creates an audible
soundtrack from the sounds the surrounding wildlife is making. The gnats form a wailful choir,
the lambs bleat, the crickets sing, the red-breast whistles, and the swallows twitter—all sounds
marking the passage of time and the advance of winter.
• Gustatory imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s
sense of taste by describing something the speaker or narrator of the poem tastes. It
may include sweetness, sourness, saltiness, savoriness, or spiciness. This is especially
effective when the poet describes a taste that the reader has experienced before and can
recall from sense memory. In Walt Whitman’s 1856 poem “This Compost,” he uses
some disturbing gustatory imagery:
• Tactile imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense
of touch by describing something the speaker of the poem feels on their body. It may
include the feel of temperatures, textures, and other physical sensations. For example,
look at Robert Browning’s 1836 poem “Porphyria’s Lover”:
Browning uses tactile imagery of the chill of a storm, the sensation when a door is closed to it,
and the fire’s blaze coming from a furnace grate to describe the warmth of the cottage.
• Olfactory imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s
sense of smell by describing something the speaker of the poem inhales. It may include
pleasant fragrances or off-putting odors. In his poem “Rain in Summer,” H.W.
Longfellow writes:
Here, Longfellow’s use of imagery in the words “clover-scented gale” and “well-watered and
smoking soil” paints a clear picture in the reader’s mind about smells the speaker experiences
after rainfall.
• Kinesthetic imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s
sense of motion. It may include the sensation of speeding along in a vehicle, a slow
sauntering, or a sudden jolt when stopping and it may apply to the movement of the
poem’s speaker/narrator or objects around them. For example, W.B. Yeats’ 1923 poem
“Leda and the Swan” begins with kinesthetic imagery:
In this retelling of the god Zeus’s rape of the girl Leda from Greek mythology, the opening
lines convey violence in the movement of the bird’s “beating” wings while Leda’s
“staggering” provides the reader with a sense of her disorientation at the events.
• Organic imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet communicates internal
sensations such as fatigue, hunger, and thirst as well as internal emotions such as fear,
love, and despair. In Robert Frost’s 1916 poem “Birches,” he makes use of organic
imagery:
In this poignant moment, Frost, who has seen bent birch trees and imagined a boy’s playful
swinging has bent them, describes feelings of fatigue and aimlessness and a longing to return
to the purposeful play of youth.