INTRODUCTION
As established in the preceding article s, poetry is a major literary genre. To gain a proper understanding of its nature, it is necessary to possess adequate knowledge of the elements distinguishing it from other genres: the novel/prose fiction, non-fiction prose, and drama. These elements, tools through which poets convey thoughts and experiences, include imagery, rhythm, sound, and diction. They form the essence of poetic study and criticism, and a full comprehension of their meaning and functions is paramount for realizing the total experience of any poem.
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this article , you should be able to:
1. Identify the major elements of poetry.
2. Explain the major elements of poetry.
3. Discuss the functions of these elements in poetry.
4. Apply your understanding of these elements in appreciating any given poem.
MAIN CONTENT
Imagery
In simple terms, imagery is a collective term used to denote the images in a poem—the objects and qualities of sense perception. It represents sense experience as graphically as possible, serving as the sensory content of a poem. It aims to evoke a picture or idea in the reader's or audience's mind. You may have experienced this when reading a poem, with images or pictures of the described ideas and objects appearing in your mind's eye. These pictures seem to materialize on the page or in the spaces before you.
Due to the power of imagery, poets use it to achieve the following important effects in their works:
- Arouse specific emotions in the reader or audience.
- Create beauty, a crucial quality of poetry.
- Communicate thoughts.
- Achieve concretion of life experiences and ideas that are otherwise abstract.
Accordingly, it is through imagery that the sense impressions and experiences evoked in a poem acquire necessary vividness and clarity.
The following are the main types of imagery that you would always find used either individually or in combination by poets in their works:
Auditory:
This type of imagery involves words or clusters of words that evoke the sense of hearing or a specific sound. Auditory images often manifest through onomatopoeia, where the sound of the words resembles or echoes the sound they denote. Examples include "hum," "murmur," "bang," "crack," "hiss," and "screech." Examples of the use of auditory imagery are found in the following excerpts from J. P. Clark's 'Night Rain' and 'Benin Sacrifice,' as well as Niyi Osundare's 'Raindrum':
1. "It is drumming hard here
And I suppose everywhere
Droning with insistent ardor upon
Our roof thatch and shed"
(Clark, 'Night Rain')
2. "The roof sizzles at the waking touch,
Talkative like kettledrums
Tightened by the iron fingers of drought"
(Osundare, 'Raindrum')
3. "Then the priest commanding
Intones the charge, and the latest
Instruments of slaughter stutter out
A message mortal..."
(Clark, 'Benin Sacrifice')
A sensitive reading of the first two excerpts above would indeed allow you to "hear" the drumming, droning, sizzling, and talkative drops of the rain resembling kettledrums on the thatch roof of the personae's abodes, as well as on the desiccated earth "licked clean by the fiery tongue of drought." In the third excerpt, the sound of machine guns ("instruments of slaughter") is mimicked or conveyed through the onomatopoeic word "stutter." The commonality of the drumbeat's sound in both poets' realization of the experience conveyed in their poems taps into a sense of hearing that you can easily appreciate.
Olfactory:
Images of this type evoke our sense of smell, whether sweet, pungent, or fragrant. Examples include:
1. "The air was heavy with odors
Of diarrhea of unwashed children"
(From Chinua Achebe's poem, 'A Mother in a Refugee Camp')
2. "'ARE YOU
LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?' Button B. Button A. Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak."
(From Wole Soyinka's poem, 'Telephone Conversation')
The lines "odors of diarrhea of unwashed children" and "stench of rancid breath" virtually transport the reader through imagination to the settings of the poems, making one a co-perceiver of the described odors by the poets.
Tactile:
This term refers to images that appeal to one's sense of touch. A notable example is the memorable line from James Shirley's poem, 'The Glories of our Blood and State':
"Death lays his icy hand on kings" (Reeves 104).
This line allows someone to feel, through imagination, the cold hand of death as it seizes its victim. The mention of the "cold hands of death" in obituary announcements often emphasizes the sense of touch, using "icy" to underscore the coldness of death.
A similar poetic process occurs in these lines from Okinba Launko's poem, 'Separation,' where the coldness and aloneness of separation, perhaps between former lovers, are concretely approximated in the comparison/simile in the last two lines of the following quotation:
"So welcome again,
The old loneliness. I hear you spring awake and hiss,
Cold as the touch of steel
In a harmattan night."
The combination of "cold" and "harmattan nights" in these lines likely evokes a familiar feeling in your mind and body. The harmattan season is associated with the cold draught of wind blowing from the Sahara Desert, a sensation many of us have experienced.
Gustatory:
This term refers to images that evoke our sense of taste. Examples include:
1. "I like to see it lap the miles
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks
And then prodigious step"
(Excerpts from the poem, 'I Like to See It Lap the Miles' by Emily Dickinson)
2. "My husband's tongue
is bitter like the roots of the
Lyono lily
It is ferocious
like the poison of a barren
Woman
And corrosive like the juice of
the gourd"
(Excerpts from the poem, 'Song of Lawino' by Okot p'Bitek)
"Children
With washed-out ribs and dried-up
Bottoms struggling in laboured
Steps behind blown empty bellies"
(Achebe, 'Beware Soul Brother')
Reading these lines conjures a vivid picture of emaciated children—the haunting remnants of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war of the 1960s. The children appear as mere ghosts of their former selves, with once robust bodies now turned skeletal, emphasizing the "blown empty bellies," symptomatic of kwashiorkor.
Kinaesthetic Imagery
Kinaesthetic imagery refers to images that evoke in the reader's mind the perception of movement. In other words, these are images that appeal to the reader's sense of movement or motion. Examples of this type of imagery include:
1. "And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran.
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:"
(Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' - Reeves 177)
2. "From the west
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning
Sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locust
Whirling
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing"
(Rubadiri's 'An African Thunderstorm')
The highlighted lines, phrases, and words convey the impression of movement, creating a vivid realization in the reader's mind's eye.
A helpful approach to understanding imagery is to view it as "a description of something concrete, whereby the writer conveys an impression of something else" (Heese and Lawton 82). This definition introduces a new set of words, terms, and registers that enhance our comprehension of how an image functions in a poem or contributes to the poem's meaning. It directs our focus toward the necessary association of similar and dissimilar objects or ideas in imagery, as well as the expansion of word scope made possible by its usage.
In this context, it's crucial to note that 'concrete' refers to something perceptible or palpable to some of the senses discussed earlier, while 'abstract' signifies an idea that cannot be seen, felt, or touched. The use of imagery enables poets to bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete, allowing, in the words of Shakespeare, to give "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name" (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1). A notable example of describing something abstract through concrete entities is seen in the closing stanza of George Herbert's poem 'Virtue,' as follows:
"Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives."
In these lines, the abstract and reified 'virtue,' which strives towards concretion in the equally impalpable 'virtuous soul,' attains a fully perceivable state in the comparison "like seasoned timber," resilient even under the hardest pressures.
In all the examples provided in the above section on well-known types of imagery, it's essential to recognize that the reader's ability to fully perceive and share in the pictures and sensations captured in the poet's verse is achieved through the adept use of figures of speech and thought. These include simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, metonymy, synecdoche, onomatopoeia, among others. It is through the employment of these figures that the poet achieves the desired figurative expression of thought and impresses their ideas in the minds of the readers.
Indeed, in this collaborative process, as James Reeves expresses, we make the best poems "part of our own lives and we make our own lives richer and more full of meaning" (The Poet’s World, xxx).
Rhythm:
Rhythm, derived from the Greek word meaning 'flow,' is considered one of the essential elements of poetry and is regarded as the most important of a poet's technical resources. In practical terms, it involves the alternation of periods of effort with periods of relaxation. According to R. N. Egudu:
"Rhythm can be compared with a beat or pulse; and as a beat or pulse implies the presence of movement in which there is the recurrence of identical points, rhythm can also be said to mean movement. Any action in which motion is involved, therefore, has some rhythm. A moving vehicle shows rhythm; and a flowing stream exhibits rhythm. Also, the rise and fall of the water in the ocean is rhythmical" (34).
Similarly, Reeves views rhythm as "a form of repetition – the repetition of a particular pattern of light and heavy syllables" (xxxvii), while Abrams defines it as "a recognizable though variable pattern in the beat of the stresses in the stream of sound" (93).
You should pay attention to the words 'beat,' 'pulse,' 'recurrence,' and 'repetition' in the above definitions of rhythm; they emphasize that rhythm follows the basic movement of the pendulum of the metronome, marking the underlying approximate equivalent time intervals between specific sounds in music. It's equally important to note that the repetition characterizing rhythm in poetry, as in music, is variable and alternates between stressed and unstressed syllables. This variation removes monotony and accounts for the diverse combinations of sound patterns that contribute to the musicality in poetry.
Have you ever imagined a song or poem that maintains the same rhythm throughout without variations in low and high tones or between light and heavy syllables? Certainly, it would be a very boring song or poem. The American poet and critic, Ezra Pound, has suavely commented on this flaw, stating that "the writer of bad verse is a bore because he does not perceive time and time relations, and cannot, therefore, delimit them in an interesting manner, by means of longer and shorter, heavier and lighter syllables, and the varying qualities of sound inseparable from the words of his speech" (199).
This leads us to the functions of appropriate rhythms in poetry. Generally, it contributes significantly to the emotional content and effect of poetry. Similar to tones in our everyday discourses, poets employ different rhythms to convey various moods or emotions to the reader or listener: they use a long line and a slow rhythm to express a somber and studious mood, and a light, tripping rhythm to convey a feeling of joy and gaiety. Rhythm may take on different qualities such as smooth, staccato, fast, slow, abrupt, disjointed, or jerky. Thus, rhythm is intricately connected with the form and the meaning expressed by the poet, providing both emotional and intellectual pleasure for the reader or audience. For example, the following excerpts illustrate the deployment of effective rhythmic patterns to achieve these different emotional effects:
1. "His gol/den locks/ Time hath/ to sil/ver turned;
O Time/ too swift,/ O Swift/ness ne/ver cea/sing!
His youth/ 'gainst time/ and age/ hath e/ver spurned,
But spurned/ in vain;/ youth wa/neth by/ in/crea/sing:
Beau/ty, strength,/ youth are/ flo/wers but fa/ding seen;
Du/ty, faith,/ love/ are/ roots,/ and/ ev/er green."
(George Peele - Reeves 51 – 52)
2. "Come, come away, to the tavern I say,
For now at home 'tis washing day;
Leave your prittle-prattle, and fill us a pottle,
You are not so wise as Aristotle.
Drawer come away, let's make it holy day:
Anon, anon, anon, Sir, what is't you say?
Anon." (Reeves 21).
From our discussion so far, it is clear that the wave-like recurrence of sound and motion that constitutes poetic rhythm has its foundation or basis in the pattern of stresses and the length of lines of poetry. This aspect of the nature of rhythm necessitates knowledge of the metrical schemes, whether 'regular' (basic meter) or 'irregular' (deviation from the basic meter). Meter in poetry is a repetitive and symmetrical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, usually indicated by the symbols or marks: (ˇ) for stressed syllables and (ˉ) for unstressed syllables.
The following is a table of the four common feet in English poetry with their sounds and examples:
| Name of foot | Name of metre | Sound | Example |
|--------------|---------------|----------|--------------|
| Iamb | Iambic | Ďa Dum | Return |
| Trochee | Trochaic | Duˉm Ďa | turning, running |
| Anapaest | Anapaestic | Ďa Ďa Dum | resurrect, jubilate |
| Dactyl | Dactylic | Dum Ďa Ďa | curious, serious, furious |
Sound:
Sound is one of the most pleasing features in a poem, forming, along with rhythm, the foundation of the musical quality associated with poetry as a form of literature. Its functions in a poem are similar to those of rhythm discussed in the preceding section. The nature or significance of sound in a poem becomes more apparent when the poem is read aloud. However, this does not imply that aural qualities are not realized when a poem is read silently. For the experienced reader, these qualities persist and are recognized as inherent parts of the total poem. Instead of the vocalized realization that marks reading aloud, these qualities are achieved through a process of sub-vocal enunciation.
When effectively deployed in a poem, sound effects enable the reader to attain a state of mind in which they can more readily appreciate the emotions and meanings conveyed by the writer. In the words of Heese and Lawton, "much of the delight to be derived from the reading of poetry stems from the pleasure experienced in contemplating patterns which are not only decorative but significant" (33).
Generally, sound effects in poetry not only provide aural/auditory pleasure to the reader but also add significance to the words used by the poet. In other words, sound in poetry is utilized to convey meaning, emotions, and pleasure. For instance, poets employ literary devices like alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, onomatopoeia, repetition, refrain, etc., to place desired emphasis on particular words and achieve specific emotions or sensations in their work. It is crucial that the sound is appropriate to the experience or action presented in a line, stanza, or the entire work. The effects produced by sound in a poem could be either good or bad, depending on the poet's skill.
The following examples illustrate some sound effects, such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, repetition, and rhyme, commonly used by poets and their effects when skillfully applied:
1
"I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver,
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action."
(Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock III' 115)
2.
"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow follow'd free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."
3.
"Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze –
On me alone it blew."
4.
"The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd,
Like noises in a swound!"
(Samuel T. Coleridge - Reeves 181, 182, 195)
Take your time to appreciate these stanzas from the poet's memorable art/literary ballad, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' Consider finding a suitable anthology of English poetry and reading this poem in its entirety, as it serves as a compendium from which one could draw illustrations of most of the devices and elements studied in this course. In terms of music, there is much sense in Pound's assertion that "the way to learn the music of verse is to listen to it" (56). Listening doesn't just imply listening to someone else read aloud lines of poetry; you can equally listen to yourself as you read, just the way you listen to yourself as you sing a song.
Diction:
Diction, in simple terms, refers to the use of words in oral or written discourse—the particular choice of words by the poet, considering their meaning and association rather than their aural qualities. More expansively, Abrams defines the term as "the selection of words in a work of literature. A writer's diction can be analyzed under categories such as the degree to which their vocabulary is abstract or concrete, Latinate or Anglo-Saxon in origin, colloquial or formal, technical or common, literal or figurative" (131). Therefore, a poet's diction is a clear indication of their interests, habit of mind, and the period they belong to.
Different periods in English literature have chosen and popularized various forms of poetic diction. In addition to the categories mentioned in Abrams' definition, a poet's diction can also be described as plain or ornate, homely or exotic, contemporary or archaic, familiar or cryptic, etc., each with its attractions and limitations. Analyzing any given poem should enable you to determine the dominant pattern of the diction or selection of words employed by a poet in their work.
Compare the following excerpts in terms of the diction used by the poet. On reading the lines, you will discover a world of difference between the poet's peculiar choice of words, as represented in these lines:
1. "It comes so quickly \
The bird of death \
From evil forests of Soviet technology \
A man crossing the road \
to greet a friend \
is much too slow"
(Achebe 'Air Raid,' BSB 15)
2. "In the greyness \
and drizzle of one despondent \
dawn unstirred by harbingers \
of sunbreak a vulture \
perching high on broken \
bone of a dead tree \
nestled close to his \
mate"
(Achebe 'Vultures,' BSB 39)
Conclusion:
Poetry has been defined in various ways by different poets and critics throughout the ages. While some prefer to view it as the subject or content written about by the poet, others emphasize that the manner of expressing this content should determine the essential nature of poetry. Regardless of these positions, there is consensus on the major elements that distinguish poetry from other forms of writing, namely imagery, rhythm, sound, and diction.
Summary:
In this article , we focused on the elements of poetry that differentiate it from other major genres of literature, such as drama and the novel. Using suitable examples, we indicated and demonstrated the nature of these elements and their contribution to the effectiveness or quality of a poem. We learned that the elements—imagery, rhythm, sound, and diction—are the vehicles that the poet utilizes to convey their thoughts and emotions while delighting their readers.
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