The Imagist Movement

What is it?An American movement that started around

1914 till 1917 (ish)Yep, this is a really short movement, but it made

some HUGE contributions to the poetry world, especially American poetry.

So what is it?

Imagist poems generally are in free verse.

They use sharp decisive language to describe an object

Economy of language is important.

You describe an object through “luminous details” (Ezra Pound)

Generally, these poems use images that are very real to express something abstract (like an emotion).

Famous Poets of this movement

Ezra Pound

Amy Lowell

Marianne Moore

William Carlos Williams

F.S. Flint

James Joyce

Then the Depression…

The Imagist movement was short, but poets who were part of it and even poets who weren’t began to change they way they wrote.

Instead of the abstract, somewhat mystical poems of the Romantics and the overarching, naturally based poems of the Transcendentalists, Imagists began to focus on “reality” Real images

Real objects Real people and places,

the everyday man.

The depression only continued this practice.

People were more interested in the “real” than any romanticized, unpractical ideal,

Attention to poetry began to grow. Especially over radio programs such as those produced by Tony Wons during the depression.

Let’s take a look at some famous Imagist poems.

The Red Wheelbarrow  by William Carlos

Williams

So much depends

Upon

A red wheel

Barrow

Glazed with rain

Water

Beside the white

chickens

Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;  

Petals on a wet, black bough.

William Carlos Williams

This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold