The Effect of Imagery on Poetry Imagery is perhaps the most important tool a writer must possess to be considered great. Imagery can be defined as language's representation of sensory experience (Arp, 607). or smell. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay by Seamus Heaneys “The Forge” provides us with many examples of touching images. many of our senses. The images in this poem touch so many of our senses that I find them a little more confusing than helpful. It touches so many senses, giving me a fuzzy picture rather than a clear, sharp one. as best I can to interpret this work, Heaney appeals, essentially, to two of our senses, sight and smell. It describes how things look and sound. Heaney only briefly recounts what something looks or sounds like. Then our imagination takes this into account and remembers something similar we saw. Everyone has seen a rusty iron hoop or axle and that is why Heaney mentions them here. We're supposed to imagine a quaint house, perhaps a farmhouse, with these objects outside, leaning against an old garage. The old rusty hoops and axes are the narrator's way of representing himself. Heaney writes “The short-pitch ring of hammered anvils” (Heaney, 612). It reminds me of an old alarm clock that had to be wound twice a day to ensure it worked properly. The anvil is the mechanism that tells man that his time may be almost up. With this motivation, he searches for what it means to truly live. Man has realized that life is unpredictable like “a fan of sparks, or a hiss as a new shoe hardens in water” (Heaney, 613). Heaney includes this phrase because man looks back on his life and many things are just repetitions and we live for the sparks or fleeting moments. I think the new hardening of shoes in water represents a new knowledge that we strive to acquire in life. The rest of this poem describes the anvil. The anvil represents everything about man, his actions, his attitude and his life. The person dies or becomes an adult at the end of the poem. “The grunts and comes in, with a clang and a bang, to beat the real iron, to work the bellows” (Heaney, 613). I believe that these last two lines signify the end of the man's life, because it seems that the iron anvil is being destroyed, or that he is becoming an adult while the iron anvil is in transforming into something more important and more valuable. Keep in mind: This is only a sample.Get a custom paper from our expert writers now.Get a custom essayOverall, I believe the narrator has described what motivates us and makes us act the way we do let's do. I also believe that man eventually dies. There are a lot of things I'm not sure about, like the ending. I don't know if the person dies or grows up. Nonetheless, I think it may be the best poem I've read.