How Does Anne Sexton Use Imagery In Poetry

Imagery means to use figurative language to compare one object to another object. An example that stood out to me was on lines 60-61,” He slid from their grasp like a rotten banana peel” (Rodriguez). I believe that this is an example of imagery because it is making an image in the reader’s mind comparing how his brother fell to a rotten banana peel. Another example that I would like to point out is on line 35, “ this abdomen of land” (Rodriguez). This line contains imagery because the use of the word abdomen is a metaphor and is comparing the middle of the land to the abdomen of a body. These examples helped clarify the statement and convinced me that this poem has

Each of the poems relies heavily on imagery to convey their respective messages. Often throughout each of the poems, the imagery is that of people. However, each uses similar imagery to very different, yet effective ways to explore the same

Imagery is used by many writers and this is when the writer uses visually descriptive or figurative language.

Anne Sexton was a poet and a woman, but most importantly, she was an outcast. Subjected to nervous breakdowns and admitted to a neuropsychiatry hospital, Sexton must have been all too familiar with the staring eyes and the judging minds of the public. Just being a woman in today's world often can be enough to degrade a person in the public's eye, let alone being labeled as a crazy woman. But Anne Sexton did not let society remain unchallenged in its views. She voiced a different opinion of women through poetry. In Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" the speaker of the poem embraces society's negative stereotype of modern, liberated women and transforms it into a positive image. Two voices, the voice of

Imagery allows the reader to hear and connect to the story by using onomatopoeia and see what is happening in the poem.

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan on May 25, 1908 to Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner. Along with uncle, his mother and father owned a local greenhouse, where Roethke spent a lot of his childhood days working and playing. He referred to the greenhouse as “my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth” ( ). The greenhouse played a huge role in his poetry. Roethke implies that only after death of the self can people come to realize the true purpose of life, love. Roethke always had stored in the back of his mind “the idea that personal selves were not the focus of time on earth”( ). Therefore, people must experience the death of their selves before they can truly live.

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

A descriptive word that creates a vivid image in one’s mind is imagery. Imagery is used in all different forms of literature like short stories, dramas, and poems. Words or phrases that use imagery can describe the senses such as sight, taste, or even smell. Poets use imagery in their poems as it helps readers connect to the poem. Readers can create their own personal images and pictures in their head with the assistance of imagery. Imagery also has readers look at and analyze poems through their own individual experiences with the imagery used. Imagery can also set the mood for a poem. If words like “sunny” or “soft” are used in a poem they’d set a happy mood, but if words like “rainy” or “foggy” are used they’d set a sad mood. “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot uses plenty of imagery to give readers insight as to what exactly the speaker sees and feels. The speaker in the poem takes what seems to be the woman he loves on a walk through, what he describes, “streets that follow like a tedious argument/ of insidious intent” (Eliot 759). The imagery that the speaker uses to describe the street is strange because instead of taking the woman he loves through a romantic and nice street, he describes the street as an argument, which is something that can be annoying,

First and foremost, Willa Cather and Mary Austin both employ beautiful imagery in their writings to recreate the landscape of the story they are telling, which heightens the understanding and appreciation for their writings. Their use of imagery is specific to appealing to their audience’s visual senses. In My Antonia, for example, Willa Cather describes the landscape at a particular moment by saying, “One afternoon we were having our reading lessons on the warm, grassy bank where the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there was a shiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the little horsepond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found tall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimy green” (Cather 29). My Antonia has these descriptive passages throughout it, which enables the reader to feel part of the book. Likewise, Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain also utilizes imagery: Mary Austin says, “the mountains are steep and the rains are heavy, the pool is

In 1908, Theodore Huebner Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. There he was raised by his mother and father, who owned a greenhouse with their uncle. As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse observing the nature, which greatly influenced his future works. Roethke attended Arthur Hill High School and later graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1929. Afterword he took a few graduate classes at Michigan and Harvard, but was unhappy and left (Kalaidjian).

Published first during the decade of the 1990s "The Boy Died in My Alley" remains a significant poem of Gwendolyn Brooks as she moves from traditional forms of poetry such as sonnets, ballads to the most unrestrictive free verse and includes the sad rhythm of the blues. This poem offers an amazing juxtaposition of dramatic poetic forms, narrative, and lyric (Guth & Rico). The story is most often simple but with the last line, they transcend the restriction of place and cover universal plight. Most often the characters of the people are memorable only due to fact that they are trying to survive the trials and tribulations of daily living. For example, in the poem, “The Boy Died in My Alley”, the author narrates an incident when a black boy is murdered in her back alley and the policeman asks her whether she has heard the shot. As she was passionate about the bad experiences of black community in the United States, her poetry is mainly about their plight in the society (Guth & Rico). The main focus of the poem, "The Boy Died in My Alley" is to study and analyze the reasons behind the violence that is associated with African-American children who live on the street.

Imagery is a strong element that helps portray a lot of internal feelings for the audience to fathom with, thus creating an experience that the audience can enjoy. Imagery is the language represented by sense experience and a literary device that helps create a mental picture for the reader to understand what the writer is trying to say to the audience (Johnson, Arp 779). The following is the poem by Langston Hughes: “The calm,/Cool face of the river/Asked me for a kiss.” (Hughes 1-3) When examining the poem, “Suicide’s Note”, it is full of imagery with only three lines present. The

“Roethke was a great poet, the successor to Frost and Stevens in modern American poetry, and it is the measure of his greatness that his work repays detailed examination” (Parini 1). Theodore Roethke was a romantic who wrote in a variety of styles throughout his long successful career. However, it was not the form of his verse that was important, but the message being delivered and the overall theme of the work. Roethke was a deep thinker and often pondered about and reflected on his life. This introspection was the topic of much of his poetry. His analysis of his self and his emotional experiences are often expressed in his verse. According to Ralph J. Mills Jr., “this self interest was the primary matter of

Imagery is a good source to help the readers better understand what is happening in the poem. There are several examples of different kinds of imagery. One example is “crouching over the hot coals of desire” (Wallada 5). This shows the use of kinetic imagery and visual imagery. It shows kinetic imagery because it shows the image of a character bending over hot coals. Visual imagery is used by having the reader visualize someone bending over something. Another example of imagery being portrayed in this poem is “there may be winter rains pelting copiously down” (Wallada 13-14). Tactile imagery is used

The use of visual imagery in each poem immensely contributed to conveying the theme. In the poem