Imagery in poetry is designed to provide a series of devices which don't naturally occur in other forms of literature. The use of rhyme, in particular, produces associations of imagery which wouldn't naturally occur in narrative text, like doggerel. Blank verse, however, if not rhyming, uses the meter of the poem as part of its delivery of imagery. Haiku uses imagery based on minimal supporting text. |
Examples of Imagery in Poetry:
Coleridge: A thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I. Poe: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered wan and weary. Traditional: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/617/01/ https://iconics.cehd.umn.edu/gallery1/g1intro.html |
![]() Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustration to christina rossetti's goblin market and other poems (1862). Goblin Market used complex poetic diction in nursery-rhyme form: 'We must not look at goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits: / Who knows upon what soil they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots?' |