What is Imagery?

Imagery is the use of visual or other types of images in poetry. The use of all kinds of concrete, metaphoric and more abstract is called imagery. Images are usually visual, but they can have all the dimensions like: visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), olfactory (smelling), kinetic (movement) and even conceptual (abstract).

An image is the mental picture or impression created by a description of an object, scene, person or situation. An image is a word picture, but it includes not only visual aspects, but also impressions related to the nose, eye, tongue, ear as well as the mind in general. The imagery makes poetry concrete. In short, “imagery” is used to denote all the objects and qualities of sense perception, whether by simple literal description, by allusion or with metaphors and similes.

A poetic image can be taken at three levels: literal, perceptual and conceptual. The literal image means the real and concrete thing, person or scene. But, in poetry, qualities are added so that the image becomes more appealing to the sense perceptions. Besides, every image, whether concrete or abstract, will be intellectually significant. That means it will have a concept or symbolic meaning behind it; that is the deepest meaning of a poetic image. For example, the image of “ripe apples and juicy grapes” is literal and appealing to sense perception, but the more abstract image of “a green thought in a green shade” is only conceptual or symbolic. In poetry, most images both concrete and abstract have conceptual or symbolic meaning.

Published on 20 Nov. 2013 by Kedar Nath Sharma