Imagist Poets
()
About this ebook
Imagism was an Anglo-American poetry movement around 1912-1917 that although short lived was influential on modern poetry. Its earliest most famous exponent was Ezra Pound and later Amy Lowell who both outlined the rules for the movement which remain central to current poetry practise and are still imparted to anyone attending poetry workshops. These rules included using only those words that were absolutely necessary, employing the exact word including common speech - not the decorative one, a total freedom of subject matter, making everything concrete - not abstract, creating new rhythms and most important of all was to concentrate everything the poet wished to communicate in a precise image. As Pound said, “It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.” Despite this radical departure from the Romantics and the Victorian poets that preceded them, Imagists were also classicists reviving the poetry of Sapho and other ancient Greek and Roman as well as Japanese and Chinese verse and 15th century French poetry which often compressed expression to its very essence. This interest in the ancients might seem conservative but the movement was hugely progressive not least for its inclusion of a number of women writers.
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11th September 1881 in Eastwood, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands. Despite ill health as a child and a comparatively disadvantageous position in society, he became a teacher in 1908, and took up a post in a school in Croydon, south of London. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911, and from then until his death he wrote feverishly, producing poetry, novels, essays, plays travel books and short stories, while travelling around the world, settling for periods in Italy, New Mexico and Mexico. He married Frieda Weekley in 1914 and died of tuberculosis in 1930.
Read more from D. H. Lawrence
33 Masterpieces of Philosophy and Science to Read Before You Die (Illustrated): Utopia, The Meditations, The Art of War, The Kama Sutra, Candide Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mornings in Mexico Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Apocalypse: And the Writings on Revelation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Etruscan Places Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reflection on the Death of a Porcupine: And Other Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prussian Officer Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Study of Thomas Hardy: And Other Essays Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tickets, Please: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Movements in European History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kangaroo Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Collected Poetry of D. H. Lawrence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sons and Lovers (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #34] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Studies in Classic American Literature Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sketches of Etruscan Places Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Selected Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Twilight in Italy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5D. H. Lawrence The Dover Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSea and Sardinia Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Women in Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Imagist Poets
Related ebooks
Lamia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTolstoy: What is Art? & Wherein is Truth in Art (Essays on Aesthetics and Literature) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEchoes of Desire: English Petrarchism and Its Counterdiscourses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModernity's Mist: British Romanticism and the Poetics of Anticipation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSubversive Stages: Theater in Pre- and Post-Communist Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreathless: Sound Recording, Disembodiment, and The Transformation of Lyrical Nostalgia Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5THOU Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fortress of Solitude Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHE GREAT RUSSIAN PLAYS & SHORT STORIES Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeaves of Grass Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoltava by Alexander Pushkin - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKundera and Modernity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Letters of a Post-Impressionist Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Joseph Brodsky's "Odysseus to Telemachus" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetics of Aristotle Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVery Woman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConduits of the Sublime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Symbolist Movement in Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLight within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Inaction Man Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Heart of Russia in Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Selected Lyric Poetry Of Maksym Rylsky Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPicture and Text Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Imagist Poets
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Imagist Poets - D. H. Lawrence
Imagist Poets, 1916, An Annual Anthology
Imagism was an Anglo-American poetry movement around 1912-1917 that although short lived was influential on modern poetry. Its earliest most famous exponent was Ezra Pound and later Amy Lowell who both outlined the rules for the movement which remain central to current poetry practise and are still imparted to anyone attending poetry workshops. These rules included using only those words that were absolutely necessary, employing the exact word including common speech - not the decorative one, a total freedom of subject matter, making everything concrete - not abstract, creating new rhythms and most important of all was to concentrate everything the poet wished to communicate in a precise image. As Pound said, It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.
Despite this radical departure from the Romantics and the Victorian poets that preceded them, Imagists were also classicists reviving the poetry of Sapho and other ancient Greek and Roman as well as Japanese and Chinese verse and 15th century French poetry which often compressed expression to its very essence. This interest in the ancients might seem conservative but the movement was hugely progressive not least for its inclusion of a number of women writers.
PREFACE
In bringing the second volume of Some Imagist Poets before the public, the authors wish to express their gratitude for the interest which the 1915 volume aroused. The discussion of it was widespread,
and even those critics out of sympathy with Imagist tenets accorded it much space. In the Preface to that book, we endeavoured to present those tenets in a succinct form. But the very brevity we employed has lead to a great deal of misunderstanding. We have decided, therefore, to explain the laws which govern us a little more fully. A few people may understand, and the rest can merely misunderstand again, a result to which we are quite accustomed.
In the first place Imagism
does not mean merely the presentation of pictures. Imagism
refers to the manner of presentation, not to the subject. It means a clear presentation of whatever the author wishes to convey. Now he may wish to convey a mood of indecision, in which case the poem should be indecisive; he may wish to bring before his reader the constantly shifting and changing lights over a landscape, or the varying attitudes of mind of a person under strong emotion, then his poem must shift and change to present this clearly. The exact
word does not mean the word which exactly describes the object in itself, it means the exact
word which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet's mind at the time of writing the poem. Imagists deal but little with similes, although much of their poetry is metaphorical. The reason for this is that while acknowledging the figure to be an integral part of all poetry, they feel that the constant imposing of one figure upon another in the same poem blurs the central effect.
The great French critic,