Imagery In Poems

The word ‘poem’ comes from the word ‘poetry’, as the form of literature that includes them is called. The latter originates from the Greek word ‘poiesis’, which means ‘making’ or ‘creating’. The nomenclature itself is proof that this form of literature has been awarded the highest position in terms of creativity and ingenuity. The best part about poems is that they are not bound by any kind of rules and regulations. There is no particular way of writing poetry. It could be narrative, dramatic, lyrical, or satirical in nature. Poems could be structured as couplets, tercets, quatrains, cinquains, sestets, or octets, or could be set to the Iambic pentameter, the Dactylic hexameter, the Anapestic tetrameter, or the Trochaic octameter. In fact, they could be bound in a carefully designed, metered rhyme scheme, or could be set as a free verse, too.

The content of the poems is also given immense amount of freedom; whatever the structure. Poems can be written in any language, using a wide variety of poetic diction, from rhetorical devices, such as similes and metaphors, to tones of voice, such as irony, to alliteration, assonance and consonance, and the strongest device of all, imagery. Poems have the wondrous ability to create vivid images, possible and impossible, in the mind, and, quite astonishingly, making us believes that they are true.

One can write a poem on anything they come across; poems are a means of expressing one’s feelings, attitudes, beliefs, experiences, and most of all, imagination. Imagery in poems creates a completely different world of fantasy for both, the poet, as well as the reader. It has the capacity to sweep you up and away to a planet of wild, wild imagination.

The use of imagery in poems is quite astounding. The really shocking aspect of imagery in poems is that it not only makes one imagine the visual facets of the object that it describes, but also the auditory, tactile and olfactory ones. In layman’s terms, imagery in poems not only feeds the mind’s eye, but also its ears and skin and nose.

Whatever the theme, whatever the structure, and whatever the point of view, imagery in poems brings it out with fantastic ease. If you can think, you can write, for thoughts are the basic foundation for poetry! So plunge yourself deep into this ocean of poetic creations, where every droplet is a tear – of sorrow or of joy, and every ripple is a movement – of the mind and heart. Feel the emotions wash over you, and cleanse you completely, so that when you emerge, you do so as a rejuvenated, enlightened, and knowledgeable being.