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The language of poetry is often visual and pictorial. Rather than depending primarily on abstract ideas and elaborate reasoning, poems depend more on concrete and specific words that create images in our minds. Poems thus help us see things afresh or feel them suggestively through our other physical senses, such as hearing or touch. Sound is, as we will see, a vital aspect of poetry. But most poems use the sense of sight to help us form, in our minds, visual impressions, images that communicate more directly than concepts. We “see” yellow leaves on a branch, a father and son waltzing precariously, or two lovers sitting together on the bank of a stream, so that our response begins from a vivid visual impression of exactly what is happening.
The languages of description are quite varied. The visual qualities of poetry result partly from the two aspects of poetic language: on the one hand, the precision of individual words, and, on the other hand, precision’s opposite—the reach, richness, and ambiguity of suggestion that words sometimes accrue.
 
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