Imagism

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Imagism

• 1. Look at the following images and describe
  what is shown.
• 2. How would you try to share this image to
  someone who has never seen it? What words,
  images, comparisons would you use?

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Images
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Images
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Images
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Imagism

• William Carlos Williams
• Born in Rutherford NJ in 1883.
• Was a writer and a doctor.
• Considered one of the principle poets of the
  Imagist movement that was inititally started by
  Ezra Pound.
• Gradually moved away from this emphasis because
  he felt it was too attached to European culture
  and traditions.
• Work received more credit and notoriety with the
  advent of the Beat poets of the 60s such as
  Ginsberg and others who felt he was very
  approachable and accessible as a mentor

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What is Imagism?

• In a Station of the MetroThe apparition of
  these faces in the crowdPetals on a wet, black
  bough.--Ezra Pound
• What is the most important idea or consideration
  in this poem?

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What is Imagism?

• A type of free verse poetry devoted to the
  clarity of expression through the use of precise
  visual images.
• Officially launched in 1912 by Ezra Pound.
• The first tenet of the Imagist manifesto was "To
  use the language of common speech, but to employ
  always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor
  the merely decorative word."

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What is Imagism?

• Imagism was a reaction against the flabby
  abstract language and "careless thinking" of
  Georgian Romanticism.
• Imagist poetry aimed to replace muddy
  abstractions with exactness of observed detail,
  apt metaphors, and economy of language.

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Imagism Pounds Metro

• In a Station of the MetroThe apparition of
  these faces in the crowdPetals on a wet, black
  bough.--Ezra Pound
• Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" started from
  a glimpse of beautiful faces in a dark subway and
  elevated that perception into a crisp vision by
  finding an intensified equivalent image. The
  metaphor provokes a sharp, intuitive discovery in
  order to get at the essence of life.

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Imagism Pounds definition

• Pound's definition of the image was "that which
  presents an intellectual and emotional complex in
  an instant of time." Pound defined the tenets of
  Imagist poetry as
• I. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether
  subjective or objective.
• II. To use absolutely no word that does not
  contribute to the presentation.
• III. As regarding rhythm to compose in sequence
  of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the
  metronome.

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The end of Imagism

• Some famous Imagist poets include William
  Carlos Williams, Richard Aldington, and James
  Joyce, as well as H.D. and Pound, F. S. Flint, D.
  H. Lawrence, and John Gould Fletcher.
• Though Imagism as a movement was over by 1917,
  the ideas about poetry embedded in the Imagist
  doctrine profoundly influenced free verse poets
  throughout the twentieth century.
• All information taken from http//www.poets.org/
  viewmedia.php/prmMID/5658

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Questions to consider

• 1. What are the objects of central attention in
  Williams poems?
• 2. What precise, exact words does Williams use
  to pinpoint as Pound called it "that which
  presents an intellectual and emotional complex in
  an instant of time?
• 3. How, in your opinion, does this movement
  agree with the concepts of Modernism?
• 4. What is effective or ineffective about this
  kind of poetry? What kind of feelings or
  thoughts do poems like this evoke?
• 5. In terms of poetry, what qualities do you
  think a poem must have to be effective?
  Considering Pounds ideas, would Imagist poems be
  effective in your opinion?