TOPIC: Imagery

We have seen how poetry is, at heart, an emotional experience.  Because of this, poetry summons all the resources of language to create that emotional experience for a reader.   One poetic tool that is critical to this project is imagery.

Imagery is any wording in a poem that appeals to the reader's senses.  It is language that prompts the reader to imaginatively see, hear, taste, smell, touch.  Because the word itself is centered on the idea of image, we tend to focus on imagery as appealing to our sense of sight, and certainly many images are based in the visual.  However, we want to keep in mind that imagery includes all of the senses.   

Take a look at this excerpt from "A Beautiful Girl Combs Her Hair" by Li Ho.

 

Awake at dawn

she's dreaming

by cool silk curtains

 

fragrance of spilling hair

half sandalwood, half aloes

 

windlass creaking at the well

singing jade

 

The phrase "cool silk curtains" is an image that appeals to our sense of touch.  The lines "fragrance of spilling hair/half sandalwood, half aloes" is an image that appeals to our sense of smell.  And the lines "windlass creaking at the well/singing jade" is an image that appeals to our sense of hearing. We are not simply told that the girl woke up at dawn.  The poet uses imagery to allow us to experience for ourselves this awakening by imaginatively using our own senses.  We feel what she feels, smell what she smells, hear what she hears. 

However, our sense perception is only the first level of experience.   Our senses are often the gateway to a higher level of experience, that of emotion.  When we discussed diction, we saw that a word can have a particular emotional resonance.  This is also the case with images.  As readers, we would want to explore the emotional resonance of the image of "cool silk curtains" and of the "windlass creaking at the well."     Understanding the emotional aspect of the images is an important part of understanding the poem as a whole.