literary imagery
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Imagery
Imagery is the most impactful element of poetry because it appeals to everyone; someone
like myself, who is not very interested in reading poetry, can derive just as much emotion as a
person who may better understand what they are reading, just from the words that appeal to our
senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste are all senses that may be triggered by key words in
the reading. For example, if an author describes a scene as being in the middle of a crowded city
street on a blistering hot summer day, your senses would jump into action and you would feel the
heat, the people pushing by, and maybe even hear the cars driving by and beeping their horns. This
means sitting back and letting the poem work in your head; reading a poem can be like watching a
movie if you really let the images unroll in your mind.
The poem "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", for example, is very stimulating to
the senses, and would not have as strong of an impact if it were not for the imagery used. Though the
author fails to utilize touch and taste, he does a very good job of illustrating his poitn using sight, sound,
and smell.
The author of this poem seems to direct most of his imagery to the sense of sight. In line 2
of the poem the author writes, "Coral is far more red than her lips' red", he could have just written
that her lips were dull. In wording it the way he did one can see in their mind a bright red bit of coral
just under the surface of a shimmering body of crystal clear water. Without this the line would have
had no effect on our imagination or feelings...