Poetry Terms: Imagery

Definition Poetry's language.Visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in literary work. Not dead words, but descriptive words/language.

Example

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

~from "Preludes"
by T. S. Eliot

Significance Using imagery is like being descriptive, for example, from this "At dawn the sun peaks out from behind mountain tops. You can see the first rays of the sun grace the Earth." to this "Blazing ball of fire/scorching hot/sphere of golden/suspended in midair./fingers of warmth reaching out of the mountain peaks." Look how it change while you read it. Doesn't it amaze you with the imagery magic?...Hope you get the idea.

How about this? It is like writing a narrative or short story to catch the teacher's eyes, how would you make it works. That's right, using more adjective words for a better reader's viewing or to make the reader imagine the scene clearer with the descriptive words.