Figurative language suggests imagery. Not all imagery is figurative. Much of it is literal, meaning the image refers to what it names without suggestion of other meanings. Images represent sensory experience. But imagery can be literal or figurative. Read the section on image vs symbol on this page for more explanation. This is how Holman and Harmon define an image in their Handbook to Literature, 6th Edition:

. . .[A]n image is a literal and concrete representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can be known by one or more of the senses. As I. A. Richards pointed out, it represents a sensation by being a "relict" of an already known sensation. The image is a distinctive element of the language of art by which experience in its richness and complexity is communicated, as opposed to the simplifying and conceptualizing process of science and philosophy. The image is, therefore a portion of the essence of the meaning of the literary work, not just decoration.

Images may be either literal or figurative, a literal image being one that involves no necessary change or extension in the obvious meaning of the words, one in which the words call up a sensory representation of the literal object or sensation; and a figurative image beingone that involves a "turn" on the literal meaning of the words. (240)

Traditionally, figurative language, based on the figurative interpretation of the image, has been contrasted with this so-called "literal language" what Holman and Harmon refer to in the language of science and philosophy. If you look up "literal," Websters will say "adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression." That sounds quite a bit like a denotative meaning. The tendency of language to go between the "literal" (literally, the letter) level and the figurative, is the basis for two potential modes of reading which some have seen to be at odds with each other.

Read the Oxford Companion to English Literature essay on "Figurative Language also figurative usage" from Xrefer <http://www.xrefer.com/entry/442086> and their entry on figures of speech <http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=442087>.

In their discussion of figurative language you will learn that "In classical rhetoric and poetics there is an inherent contrast between figurative or ornamental usage on the one hand and literal or plain and conventional usage on the other; in this contrast, figures of speech are regarded as embellishments that deviate from the 'ordinary' uses of language." The essay goes on to explain the history of the progression of thought away from regarding figurative language as mere ornament and therefore deviant, to something far more fundamental to human thought and language itself. Understanding this debate and its history is essential to your appreciation of figurative language.

Follow that essay with the Oxford Companion to English Literature's entry on Metaphor, from Xrefer <http://www.xrefer.com/entry/442932> It is an excellent brief essay on metaphor covering clear definitions of the metaphor, how it has been taught to students since Aristotle, since Richard's influential definitions of Vehicle, Tenor and Ground. It also covers the Scope and Range of metaphor, Extended metaphors, all the way to Dead metaphors.

Explore further the difference between literal versus figurative reading:

Read Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners on Rhetorical Tropes; You will need to scroll down to the near end of this lengthy and thorough treatment of Rhetorical Tropes, where you will find "an amusing discussion of metaphor and metonymy in David Lodge's novel, Nice Work" (1988).

It is mainly a dialog between a woman who reads advertisements figuratively and a man who insists on literal meanings. (Try to ignore the gender stereotype in that. And if you are squeamish about a discussion of advertising symbols that gets around to sex, you may want to skip it altogether.) After you have read Chandler and Lodge, try looking for images of magazine ads which contain metaphors. Find several advertisements and analyze their figurative language.

Solidify your understanding of how reading poetry depends on sensitivity to figurative language

Here is an excellent introduction to reading poetry from University of Maribor Faculty of Education Department of English and American Studies <http://www.pfmb.uni-mb.si/eng/dept/eng/poetry/text/reading.htm> They cover both imagery and figurative language.

• figurative language <http://www.pfmb.uni-mb.si/eng/dept/eng/text/figlang.htm> and
• imagery <http://www.pfmb.uni-mb.si/eng/dept/eng/text/imagery.htm>

Here is Phil Nel's explanatory page on Imagery and Figurative Language from Kansas State University <http://www.ksu.edu/english/nelp/childlit/papers/imagery_and_fig_lang.html>

Learn the Terms:

Use Xrefer to look up the following terms that relate to a study of figures of speech:

Find Facts:
the web's reference engine

Keep in mind the language of poetics is extensive, as you can see from browsing among the suggested links on the pages which XRefer provides. As a beginning student you should try to avoid being overwhelmed by this discourse.

There are other sites which I also recommend that you use in order to read about figurative language and to define the terms. See how many of these terms you can find in them. Each of the links you will find on the links page under Glossaries can be tried the terms and definitions you wish to pursue. Some of these glossaries may offer definitions more manageable for a beginner. Links: Glossaries.

Looking at specific poems:

Nothing, however, can surpass the actual analysis of the imagery and figures of speech in specific poems in order to test and strengthen your powers of understanding. Therefore, here is a method for doing that. In order to emphasize the fact that metaphors (and similes, metonymies, synechdochies, etc.) all have parts which can be named, long ago I. A. Richards named the two main parts, the tenor and the vehicle. Just as you might assume, the vehicle is the image that carries the meaning of the association. If you look up the word tenor you will find it means "the concept, object, or person meant in a metaphor." Here are Holman and Harmon on this point:

The tenor is the idea being expressed or the subject of the comparison; the vehicle is the image by which this idea is conveyed or the subject communicated. When Shakespeare writes:

That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, to hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang--

the tenor is old age, the vehicle is the season of late fall or early winter, conveyed through a group of images unusually rich in implications. The tenor and vehicle together constitute the figure, trope or "turn" in meaning that the metaphor conveys. (288)

Now, let's look at Kinnell's poem Blackberry Eating: <http://www.webspan.net/~amunno/galway.html >

The first four lines are clearly literal imagery:

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly,

As Holman and Harmon define an image, "a literal and concrete representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can be known by one or more of the senses. . . .a literal image being one that involves no necessary change of extension in the obvious meaning of the words" (240).

However, with the phrase that begins "a penalty/ they earn for knowing the black art/ of blackberry-making;" we enter the realm of the metaphor--in this case a personification of the stalks which can not literally "earn" or "know" since these are human activities. Thus we find the first metaphor: blackberry bush stalks are being compared to humans in some way in that they know how to produce blackberries by some black art or magic. From this point on the imagery is an intertwining of the bush's blackberry making and another sort of making. The vehicle is the blackberry generation of berries while the tenor remains to be completely uncovered.

. . . and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, . .

The speaker "stands among them/ lifting the stalks to [his] mouth" and as he does so, another metaphor occurs: he says, "the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, / as words sometimes do." The berries come to his mouth "unbidden" or unasked, uninvited in the same way that words come, we can assume, to the poet. This is a simile. Berries falling easily to his mouth is the vehicle; while words coming to his mouth would be the tenor.

. . . certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

Moreover, the blackberry/words metaphor is extended to specific words, words which, when you say them and note the way your tongue moves in your mouth, replicate the activity of crushing the berries in the eating. Thus the "squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well" of the next line becomes both blackberries in the mouth and the words of blackberry eating in the poet's mouth as he recreates "the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry-eating in late September."

This poem then has as its vehicle the blackberries, the plants, the berrys, the stalks, and the eating of them being asked to carry the tenor of the poet's act of creating poems. Just as the bush knows the "black art" of making berries, the poet knows the art of making words into poems.

Now go on to read and try to explain the extended figurative language in either RANDALL JARRELL, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner or JOHN DONNE, [Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You]. Try an analysis that addresses the imagery throughout the poems.

Bad Figurative Language:

Sometimes novice writers are encouraged to create figurative language and henceforth everyone wishes they hadn't! As you all know, email jokesters like to send around anonymously originated funny stuff. Here is some of one such email making the rounds. It is titled: "Yet another bunch of Apocryphal Metaphors from Student Essays." I don't believe for a second students write such nonsense metaphors or similes except under duress or to make a joke of the assignment. However, one cannot read the list without developing a sense of figurative language gone horribly awry.

• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
• McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
• Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
• Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
• The politician was gone but not forgotten, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
• They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
• John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds that had also never met.
• The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
• The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
• He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
• Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap; only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
• The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
• He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
• Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
• She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.