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