By Imagery is one of the literary devices used to make poetry more lively and compelling. It invokes imagination and makes the reader think vividly.
It is about forming a picture or image out of the written lines. Imagery invokes the senses. It is also the language that evokes sensation and is all about creating images in the readers’ minds.
Ezra Pound, a noted American poet has said that: “Better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.”
Imagery performs the function of tasting, feeling, seeing, touching, and hearing the poem. They are like sense organs. There are five types of imagery:
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Visual imagery (sight)
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Auditory imagery (hearing)
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Olfactory imagery (smell)
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Gustatory imagery (taste)
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Tactile imagery (touch)
In a Station of the Metro (1916), a poem by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The image of the people’s faces in the crowd is like flower petals on a dark branch of a tree. Wet petals represent the imagery of touch whereas black bough represents the image of sight.
Let us look at the following poem by Gary Snyder
Some Good Things to Be Said for the Iron Age (1970)
A ringing tire iron
dropped on the pavement
whang of a saw
brusht on limbs
the taste
of rust
Here, two auditory images have been presented and imagery of taste has also been mentioned. The ringing of iron tire and the sound of a saw are the auditory images. The taste of rust is clearly the gustatory imagery or imagery of taste.
I would like to cite my poem entitled “Silence” from my book “The Poetic Burden and Other Poems.”
Silence
Tremendous changes can happen
Humongous events can occur
An awakening occurs although in silence
How loud is the earth?
Is it like a city loudspeaker voicing its inner demons?
When I think in this loud earth
Will my thinking create a ripple in the ocean of silence?
City loudspeaker is the imagery of sound and a ripple can be imagery of sight.
I would like to cite another poem of mine from my book “The Poetic Burden and Other Poems.”
This poem has imagery of touch.
Rain-Bound
Leaking rooftop rainboarding
heavy raindrops from the sky strike at my shoulder
I look up to the sky and ask —
why the open sky cannot be my roof?
My stand on the ground is wet like a fish in the sea
around me abounds water lying knee deep.
Am I unable to concretise my whole habitat?
Should I make concrete farms, concrete lands, and concrete
gardens?
Waterlogged I am.
I am a new coinage for old plight,
today I am again rain-bound.
Wet like a fish in the sea is the imagery of touch in the poem. Raindrops striking at the shoulder are also imagery of touch.
Let us look at the following poem by well-known Indian poet Gopal Lahiri. The poem is from his collection: “Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets.”
Solitude
The sky azure is transformed; masked, distanced, hushed
it feels like a faraway place, a half-forgotten memory
into the time zone.
Days are mundane, full of daily rituals
filter into rooms,
it smells- over-boiled coffee, fabrics
stranger’s perfume- short stay, short smile, short humour.
The low hum of conversations trails rusted words
along the road’s long stretch, and the whirring ceiling fan
is always curious to defeat silence.
It is the realm of confinement, of surreal portrayal
within the rustle of thin yet recurring episodes
rolling like sheets of paper.
The images fill-up the solitude with repeat marks and scratches.
Over-boiled coffee and stranger’s perfume represent imagery of smell. Many other things are associated with the smell of a stranger’s perfume such as short stay, short smile, and short humor of the stranger. The olfactory imagery is best at its work in this poem by Gopal Lahiri. Furthermore, the whirring ceiling fan is also auditory imagery. Sheets of paper are tactile imagery.
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