Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language.[1] Imagism has been termed "a succession of creative moments" rather than a continuous or sustained period of development. The French academic René Taupin remarked that "it is more accurate to consider Imagism not as a doctrine, nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain time in agreement on a small number of important principles".[2]
This article is about the Anglo-American poetry movement. For the contemporaneous Russian poetry movement, see Imaginism.
The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romantic and Victorian poetry. In contrast to the contemporary Georgian poets, who were generally content to work within that tradition, Imagists called for a return to more Classical values, such as directness of presentation, economy of language, and a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms; Imagists used free verse. A characteristic feature of the form is its attempt to isolate a single image to reveal its essence. This mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism. Although these poets isolate objects through the use of what the American poet Ezra Pound called "luminous details", Pound's ideogrammic method of juxtaposing concrete instances to express an abstraction is similar to Cubism's manner of synthesizing multiple perspectives into a single image.[3]
Imagist publications appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured works by many of the most prominent modernist figures in poetry and other fields, including Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Amy Lowell, Ford Madox Ford, William Carlos Williams, F. S. Flint, and T. E. Hulme. The Imagists were centered in London, with members from Great Britain, Ireland and the United States. Somewhat unusually for the time, a number of women writers were major Imagist figures.
After Imagism[edit]
In 1929, Walter Lowenfels jokingly suggested that Aldington should produce a new Imagist anthology.[44] Aldington, by now a successful novelist, took up the suggestion and enlisted the help of Ford and H.D. The result was the Imagist Anthology 1930, edited by Aldington and including all the contributors to the four earlier anthologies with the exception of Lowell, who had died, Cannell, who had disappeared, and Pound, who declined. The appearance of this anthology initiated a critical discussion of the place of the Imagists in the history of 20th-century poetry.[45]
Of the poets who were published in the various Imagist anthologies, Joyce, Lawrence and Aldington are now primarily remembered and read as novelists. Marianne Moore, who was at most a fringe member of the group, carved out a unique poetic style of her own that retained an Imagist concern with compression of language. William Carlos Williams developed his poetic along distinctly American lines with his variable foot and a diction he claimed was taken "from the mouths of Polish mothers".[46] Both Pound and H.D. turned to long form poetry, but retained the hard edge to their language as an Imagist legacy. Most of the other members of the group are largely forgotten outside the context of Imagism.[47]
Legacy[edit]
Despite the movement's short life, Imagism would deeply influence the course of modernist poetry in English. Richard Aldington, in his 1941 memoir, writes: "I think the poems of Ezra Pound, H.D., Lawrence, and Ford Madox Ford will continue to be read. And to a considerable extent T. S. Eliot and his followers have carried on their operations from positions won by the Imagists."[48]
On the other hand, the American poet Wallace Stevens found shortcomings in the Imagist approach: "Not all objects are equal. The vice of imagism was that it did not recognize this."[49]
With its demand for hardness, clarity and precision and its insistence on fidelity to appearances coupled with its rejection of irrelevant subjective emotions Imagism had later effects that are demonstratable in T. S. Eliot's Preludes and Morning at the Window and in Lawrence's animal and flower pieces. The rejection of conventional verse forms in the nineteen-twenties owed much to the Imagists' repudiation of the Georgian Poetry style.[50]
Imagism, which had made free verse a discipline and a legitimate poetic form, influenced a number of poetry circles and movements. Its influence can be seen clearly in the work of the Objectivist poets,[51] who came to prominence in the 1930s under the auspices of Pound and Williams. The Objectivists worked mainly in free verse. Clearly linking Objectivism's principles with Imagism's, Louis Zukofsky insisted, in his introduction to the 1931 Objectivist issue of Poetry, on writing "which is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody." Zukofsky was a major influence on the Language poets,[52] who carried the Imagist focus on formal concerns to a high level of development. In his seminal 1950 essay Projective Verse, Charles Olson, the theorist of the Black Mountain poets, wrote "One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception",[53] his credo derived from and supplemented the Imagists.[54]
Among the Beats, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg in particular were influenced by the Imagist emphasis on Chinese and Japanese poetry. Williams also had a strong effect on the Beat poets, encouraging poets like Lew Welch and writing an introduction for the book publication of Ginsberg's Howl (1955).