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. Group publication of work under the Imagist name in magazines and four anthologies that appeared between 1914 and 1917 featured writing by many of the most significant figures in Modernist poetry in English as well as a number of other Modernist figures who were to be prominent in fields other than poetry.

Based in London, the Imagists were drawn from Britain, Ireland and the United States and, somewhat unusually for the time, featured a number of women writers amongst their major figures. Historically, Imagism is also significant because it was the first organised Modernist English-language literaty movement or group. In the words of T.S. Eliot; "The point de repère usually and conveniently taken as the starting-point of modern poetry is the group denominated 'imagists' (sic) in London about 1910."

Early Imagism

The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, Autumn and A City Sunset by T. E. Hulme. These were published in January 1909 by the Poets' Club in London in a booklet called For Christmas MDCCCCVIII. Hulme was a student of mathematics and philosophy who had set up the 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 in an unnamed new group 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. This group included F.W. Tancred, Joseph Cambell , Edward Storer and the writer and actor Florence Farr , who also worked with W.B. Yeats on performances of poetry to a musical accompaniment on the psaltery.

In April 1909, the American poet Ezra Pound was introduced to this group and found that their ideas were close to his own. In particular, Pound's studies of Romance literature had led him to an admiration of the condensed, direct expression that he detected in the writings of Arnaut Daniel, Dante, and Guido Cavalcanti, amongst others. For example, in his 1911/12 series of essays I gather the limbs of Osiris, Pound writes of Daniel's line pensar de lieis m'es repaus (it rests me to think of her) (from the canzone En breu brizara'l temps braus): You cannot get statement simpler than that, or clearer, or les rhetorical. These criteria of directness, clarity and lack of rhetoric were to be amongst the defining qualities of Imagist poetry. Through his friendship with Laurence Binyon, Pound had already developed an interest in Japanese art and he quickly became absorbed in the study of Japanese verse forms.

In a 1928 letter to the French critic and translator René Taupin , Pound was keen to emphasise another ancestory for Imagism; pointing out that Hulme was, in many ways, indebted to a Symbolist tradition, linking back via W.B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and the '90s generation of British poets to Mallarme. In 1915, Pound edited the poetry of another 90's poet, Lionel Johnson for the publisher Elkin Mathews. In his introduction, he wrote "no one has written purer Imagisme than [Johnson] has, in the line 'Clear lie the fields, and fade into blue air.' It has a beauty like the Chinese."

Early publications and statements of intent

In 1911, Pound introduced two other poets to the Eiffel Tower group, his ex-fiancée Hilda Doolittle (who had started signing her work H.D.) and her future husband Richard Aldington. These two were interested in exploring Greek poetic models, especially Sappho, an interest that Pound shared. The compression of expression that they achieved by following the Greek example complemented the proto-Imagist interest in Japanese poetry, and, in 1912, during a meeting with them in the British Museum tea room, Pound told H.D. and Aldington that they were Imagistes, and even appended the signature H.D. Imagiste to some poems they were discussing.

When Harriet Munroe started her Poetry magazine in 1911, she had asked Pound to act as foreign editor. In October 1912, he submitted three poems each by H.D. and Aldington under the Imagiste rubric. That same 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, Choricos, To a Greek Marble, and Au Vieux Jadrin, were in the November issue of Poetry and H.D.'s, Hermes of the Ways, Orchard, and Epigram, appeared in the January 1913 issue; Imagism as a movement was launched.

The March issue of Poetry also 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:

1. Direct treatment of the "thing", whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

Pound's note opened with a definition of an image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. His list of don'ts reinforced Flint's three statements, while warning that they should not be considered as dogma but as the result of long contemplation. Taken together, these two texts comprised the Imagist programme for a return to what they saw as the best poetic practice of the past.

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 . This was published in 1914 by the Poetry Bookshop in London. In addition to ten poems by Aldington, seven by H.D. and six by Pound, the book included work by Flint, Skipwith Cannell, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Upward and John Cournos.

Pound's editorial choices were based on what he saw as the degree of sympathy that these writers displayed with Imagist precepts, rather than active participation in a group as such. Williams, who was based in the United States, had not participated in any of the discussions of the Eiffel Tower group. However, he and Pound had long been corresponding on the question of the renewal of poetry along similar lines. Ford was included at least partly because of his strong influence on Pound as the younger poet made the transition from his earlier, Pre-Raphaelite influenced, style towards a harder, more modern way of writing.

The inclusion of a poem by Joyce, I Hear an Army which was sent to Pound by W.B. Yeats, took on a wider importance in the history of literary modernism as the subsequent correspondence between the two led to the serial publication, at Pound's behest, of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in The Egoist. Joyce's poem is not written in free verse, but in rhyming quatrains. However, it does reflect strongly Pound's interest in poems written to be sung to music, as in the troubadours and Cavalcanti.

The book met with little popular or critical success, partly because it had no introduction or commentary to explain what the poets were attempting to do, and a number of copies were returned to the publisher.

Some Imagist Poets

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.

Around this time, Amy Lowell (1874-1925) moved to London, determined to promote her own work and that of the other Imagist poets. Lowell was a wealthy heiress from Boston who loved Keats and cigars and who was an enthusiastic champion of literary experiment. She edited and published Imagist anthologies in 1915, 1916 and 1917, featuring most of the original poets with the exception of Pound, who sardonically dubbed this phase of Imagism 'Amygism.' She also convinced D. H. Lawrence to contribute poems. Marianne Moore also became associated with the group at this time. The 1917 anthology effectively marked the end of the Imagists as a movement.

The Imagists After Imagism

The Imagist Anthology 1930, edited by Aldington, included all the contributors to the four earlier anthologies with the exception of Lowell, who had died, Cantwell, who had disappeared, and Pound, who declined. This anthology initiated a discussion of the place of the Imagists in the history of 20th century poetry.

Of the poets who were called Imagists, Joyce, Lawrence and Aldington are now primarily remembered and read as novelists. Marianne Moore, who was at best a fringe member, carved out a unique poetic voice for herself. William Carlos Williams developed his poetic along distinctly American lines with his variable foot and diction which he claimed was from 'the mouths of Polish mothers'. Both Pound and H.D. became interested in writing long poems but retained much of the hard edge to their language as an Imagist legacy. Most of the other members of the group are largely forgotten except inasmuch as they contributed directly to the history of Imagism.

References

Print

• Blau Duplessis, Rachel. H.D. The Career of that Struggle. (The Harvester Press, 1986). ISBN 0-7108-0548-9
• Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World. (Collins, 1985) ISBN 0385131291
• Jones, Peter (ed.). Imagist Poetry (Penguin, 1972).
• Kenner, Hugh. The Pound Era (Faber and Faber, 1975 edition). ISBN 0-571-10668-4
• Sullivan, J.P. (ed). Ezra Pound (Penguin critical anthologies series, 1970). ISBN 14-080033-6

Online

• Imagists.org

Online text

• The 1915 issue of Some Imagist Poets