Imagery

                In writing imagery is one of the most important parts of that piece of writing. This imagery can help the reader imagine the setting that the story is taking place in. Imagery can be all sorts of different things that inform the reader what is happening within what they are reading. Examples of different types of imagery are olfactory-smell- imagery or gustatory-taste- imagery, or auditory-sound- imagery. All of these different types of imagery give the reader a better understanding of what is happening within the story. Even if the book is minimalistic imagery is needed in the book. For example The Road by Cormac McCarthy; this book is set in the time period of the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, and is a minimalistic book, though it has great imagery to show how horrifying the world is.

                Imagery is also needed in smaller pieces of writing such as poetry. Even though a piece of poetry may be small they usually are jam full of imagery that helps the reader understand the poem more fully. Sometimes the imagery may be more difficult to pinpoint in these pieces of poetry, but that is why poetry takes more thought to read. It is also more non literal than normal prose. A poem that uses imagery to its advantage and paints a beautiful picture or pictures in your head is “To Autumn” by John Keats. This poem utilizes the use of imagery to its advantage, and has a beautiful seasonal scene.

Here is the poem:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats (1795-1821)