The images in poetry hold what we know, think, and remember using the five senses of sight, auditory, touch, smell, and taste. Poetry describes experience we perceive and remember from a personal reference. The words used in poetry use the reader’s emotional involvement in a literal way to replicate in words the object or experience (Example: “the orange was round”). This can be also expanded on in a figurative image to compare an object or experience to something else (Example: “The orange was round like a bouncing ball”). The image used makes connections between things we would not usually associate with each other using a simile with the words like, as, seems, or appears, in the comparison (Example: “My joy is like a river”). The poem can also give emotions or human qualities to inhuman objects or things. This is called personification (Example: “The sleeping Sea”, or, “the whispers of wind” or “in the listening sky”).
Challenge: Select a painting or a picture. Describe the image using similes or personification to describe it.
Karen Hein Poetry 