The poet’s use of sensory details
Read the poem “Wild Orchard” by William Carlos Williams. Based on the poet’s use of sensory details in the poem, write a response to the following:
Explain how the poet’s use of sensory details in the poem establishes a contrast between the orchard and the surrounding landscape and reveals the relationship between the trees and the landscape’s “savage aristocracy of rocks.”
Write a well-organized informational essay that uses specific evidence from the poem to support your answer.
Remember to:
• clearly state your thesis • organize your writing • develop your ideas in detail • use evidence from the selection in your response • use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar
Manage your time carefully so that you can:
• review the selection • plan your response • write your response • revise and edit your response
Sample Solution
If you’ve practiced or studied creative writing, chances are you’ve encountered the expression “paint a picture with words.” In poetry and literature, this is known as imagery: the use of figurative language to evoke a sensory experience in the reader. When a poet uses descriptive language well, they play to the reader’s senses, providing them with sights, tastes, smells, sounds, internal and external feelings, and even internal emotion. The sensory details in imagery bring works to life. Imagery allows the reader to clearly see, touch, taste, smell, and hear what is happening—and in some cases even empathize with the poet or their subject. Most writing contains some level of imagery. One reason fiction writers deal in significant concrete detail is to permit the reader the pleasure of arriving at their own judgments and conclusions through perceptual clues. However, writers don’t have to always resort to describing the way things look to create mental images.
