imagery

Use of metaphor, simile, and other figures of speech to create a visual picture to stimulate the imagination and the senses, often helping the reader to experience a situation more vividly; this includes the use of symbols and picture-words, and descriptive language, such as the use of adjectives and adverbs. The aim is to clarify or explain.

Images help readers experience a situation more vividly because they turn abstract language into concrete ‘visuals’. Imagery is the major descriptive tool for both poets and writers of prose. Imagism, a movement in Anglo-American poetry in the early 20th century, had a profound impact on modern and contemporary poetry, since it rejected many traditional poetic devices in favour of images. Ezra Pound's ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (1913) is regarded as an example of a poem of ‘pure image’.