Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It has been described as the most influential movement in English poetry since the Pre-Raphaelites. As a poetic style it gave modernism its start in the early 20th century, and is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language.

About Imagism in brief

Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It has been described as the most influential movement in English poetry since the Pre-Raphaelites. As a poetic style it gave modernism its start in the early 20th century, and is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romantic and Victorian poetry. They 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. A characteristic feature of the form is its attempt to isolate a single image to reveal its essence. This feature mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism. Although these poets isolates objects through the use of what 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 asingle image. 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. In the century’s first decade, poetry still had a large audience; volumes of verse published in that time included Thomas Hardy’s The Dynasts, Christina Rossetti’s posthumous Poetical Works, Ernest Dowson’s Poems, George Meredith’s Last Poems and Robert Service’s Ballads of a Cheechako.

In 1907, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Rudyard Kipling. As the new century opened, Alfred Austin was still the serving British Poet Laureate, a post he held up to 1913. Future Nobel Prize winner William Butler Yeats was devoting much of his energy to the Abbey Theatre and writing for the stage, producing relatively little lyric poetry during this period. The interest in Japanese verse forms can be a context of the late Victorian and Edwardian revival of interest in Chaponism as witnessed in the 1890s vogue for William Anderson’s prints. The literary models of direct verse were available from a number of sources, including F. V. Hyakins’ 1866 Poet’s Vinsuets, Stanzas, J. J. Sullivan’s operettas of the 19th Century, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Operetta of the 20th Century. A number of women writers were major Imagist figures, including S. S. Flint, F. M. Ford Madox Ford, William Carlos Williams, and T. E. Hulme, who was the first secretary of the London Poets’ Club in 1908 and was its first secretary. The group’s publications featured works by many of the most prominent modernist figures in poetry and other fields.

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