 Compared to the two other genres, poetry more appeals to the senses. The appeal that poetry makes to the reader can either be direct or indirect. The direct appeal happens when a poem is read aloud whereas the indirect appeal occurs when the imagery in a poem stimulates the reader’s sensory organs. Though often written off as decoration or illustration, imagery lies at the heart of poetry.  Monfrey: imagery as “a whole set of images, or all the images that go to form our sense impressions of a piece of writing” (1978:128).  Lewis (via Abrams, 1971:76) states that an image is “a picture made out of words” and that “a poem may itself be an image composed from a multiplicity of images”.  Altenbernd and Lewis “finally, imagery is one of the chief means by which literature achieves the concrete, specific, and hence moving and impressive quality we have attributed to it” (1966:14).  Kennedy (2003:96): a word or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience.  As a matter of fact, it is imagery that helps the reader to participate in and share the poet’s experience.

  (1) visual imagery (the sense of sight),   The apparition of these new faces in the crowd;  Petals on a wet, black bough.  (Pound’s In A Station of the Metro) 

 auditory imagery (the sense of sound),   Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs  (Whitman’s Songs of Myself) 

 tactile imagery (the sense of touch),   The piercing chill I feel:  my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom,  under my heel ….  (Taniguchi Buson’s The Piercing chill I feel)

 olfactory imagery (the sense of smell),   The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me. The smoke of my own breath,  (Whitman’s Songs of Myself)

 gustatory imagery (the sense of taste),   Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup  Looking down for miles….  (Gary Snyder’s Mid August at Soudough Mountain Lookout)

 kinesthetic imagery (the sense of movement).   the startled little waves…  (Browning’s Meeting at Night)

 Meeting at Night  (Robert Browning )  I  The grey sea and the long black land;  And the yellow half-moon large and low;  And the startled little waves that leap  In fiery ringlets from their sleep,  As I gain the cove 1) with pushing prow 2), 05  And quench 3) its speed i’ the slushy 4) sand.   II  Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;  Three fields to cross till a farm appears;  A tap at the pane 5), the quick sharp scratch  And blue spurt 6) of a lighted match,10  And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,  Than the two hearts beating each to each.   Vocabulary:  small bay  pointed front of a ship or boat  to put out a fire, or satisfy one’s thirst; here it has the sense of ‘stop’  very soft and watery  one of the panels of glass in a window  sudden burst of flame

 Parting at Morning  (Robert Browning )   Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,  And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:  And straight was a path of gold for him,  And the need of a world of men for me.