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150px Ezra Pound, one of the prime movers of Imagism. Imagism was a movement in early 20th century Anglo-American poetry. It rejected romantic and sentimental Victorian traditions in favour of precision of imagery in clear, sharp language.
1 Early Imagism
frame H.D.
The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, Autumn and A City Sunset by T. E. Hulme that were published in 1909 by the Poets' Club in London. Hulme was a student of mathematics and philosophy who had set up the Poets' Club to discuss his theories of poetry. Writing in A. R. Orage's magazine The New Age, the poet and critic F. S. Flint (a champion of free verse and modern French poetry) was highly critical of the club and its publications. From the ensuing debate, Hulme and Flint became close friends. They started meeting with other poets at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Soho to discuss plans to reform contemporary through free verse and the tanka and haiku and the removal of all unnecessary verbiage from poems.
150px Richard Aldington
In April 1909, the American poet Ezra Pound was introduced to this group and found that their ideas were close to his own. In 1911, Pound introduced two other poets to the Eiffel Tower group, his ex-fiancée Hilda Doolittle and her future husband Richard Aldington. That same year, Harriet Munroe started her PoetryPoetry (Chicago is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. The magazine was founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, who was working as an art critic of the Chicago Tribune''. Contributors include T. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne magazine and asked Pound to act as foreign editor. In October 1912, he submitted three poems each by H.D. and Aldington under the rubric Imagiste. That month Pound's book Ripostes was published with an appendix called The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme which carried a note that saw the first appearance of the word Imagiste in print. Aldington's poems were in the November issue of Poetry and H.D.'s in January 1913 and Imagism as a movement was launched. The March issue contained Pound's A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste and Flint's Imagisme. The latter contained this succinct statement of the group's position:
- Direct treatment of the "thing", whether subjective or objective.
- To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
- As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronomeA mechanical wind-up metronome in motion A metronome is a device that produces a strict rhythm. The metronome was invented by Johann Nepomuk Malzel. Musicians use metronomes when they practice in order to keep a standard tempo; ie, keep a steady beat thro.
2 Des Imagistes
Determined to promote the work of the Imagists, and particularly of Aldington and H.D., Pound decided to publish an anthology under the title Des Imagistes . In addition to these two poets, he included work by himself, Flint, Skipwith CannellSkipwith Cannell ( 1887 1957) was an American poet associated with the Imagist group. Cannell, Skipwith Cannell, Skipwith Cannell, Skipwith Cannell, Skipwith., Amy LowellAmy Lowell ( February 9, 1874 May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Lowell was born to a prominent Massachusetts family. One brother, Percival Lowell, was a famous astronomer,, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Upward and John Cournos. The book was published in 1914 and met with little popular or critical success, partly because it had no introduction or commentary to explain what the poets were attempting to do.
Shortly after this publication, Pound and Flint fell out over their different interpretations of the history and goals of the group, and Pound was to play no further direct role in the history of the Imagists. He went on to co-found the Vorticists, an even more radical group of artists and writers.
