Transcript Lesson 2 - MSU Eng Ed Cohort 2008 Sec 1

Imagery
“Impression, soleil levant” by Claude Monet
What is imagery?
Imagery is used in literature to refer to descriptive language that evokes a sensory
experience. Such images can be created using a figure of speech such as similes,
metaphors, personification, or assonance. Imagery can also invoke the use of
onomatopoeias that trigger images in the reader's mind.
From “The Widow's Lament in Springtime”
“...masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red...”
Your assignment:
In groups, read the
poem aloud. You may
need to read the poem
aloud two or more times.
After reading the poem
aloud, find any images that
jump out at you from the
text. What lines and/or
words in the poem make
you 'see' this image? What
mood do these images
create? Why do you think
the poet chose to include
these images in the poem?
Dawn
Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the
sky
with metallic clinkings-beating color up into it
at a far edge,--beating it,
beating it with rising,
triumphant ardor,-stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading
change,-bursting wildly against it
as
dividing the horizon, a
heavy sun
lifts himself--is lifted-bit by bit above the edge
of things,--runs free at
last
out into the open-!lumbering
glorified in full release
upward-songs cease.
William Carlos Williams
The Tulip Bed
The May sun--whom
all things imitate-that glues small leaves to
the wooden trees
shone from the sky
through bluegauze clouds
upon the ground.
Under the leafy trees
where the suburban
streets
lay crossed,
with houses on each
corner,
tangled shadows had
begun
to join
the roadway and the
lawns.
With excellent precision
the tulip bed
inside the iron fence
upreared its gaudy
yellow, white and red,
rimmed round with grass,
reposedly.
William Carlos Williams
Spring and All
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast -- a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and
fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines -Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches --
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind -Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined -It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance -- Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken
William Carlos Williams
Write a 8-12 line poem in any form in which you
use visual imagery to create a specific mood.
(You may write about anything as long as it is
school appropriate and create any mood you
would like for your poem.) Then, write a ½ page
paragraph explaining what images you used, what
mood you were trying to create, and why you
chose those specific images to help create this
mood for your readers. You will be sharing these
poems and reflections in small groups on Monday.