There are various genres of poetry. Some poems are from the Romanticism genre, some from transcendentalism, and some are from ancient Greek. Imagist poetry or the imagism movement in poetry is one such which focuses on a concise description of the subject with the condensed, economical use of words.
Of course, this is a very simplistic definition of imagist poems. Imagism, in simple terms, focuses on giving a concrete description of what the poet sees without the use of rhetoric, without unnecessary adjectives and comparisons. The poems must be concise, condensed, and to the point.
This does not mean that there is a restriction on the usage of words. One can use any word they like, colloquial or common (although common words are preferred). The restriction is on the description of the subject. It is using the least amount of words to describe the best and most striking thing about the subject and ending it there.
Here’s everything you’ll find in this article:
- How and why imagism was started
- Some famous imagist poets
- Famous imagism poems
- How to write imagist poems
- Characteristic of imagist poetry
How and why imagism in poetry started
Every poetry movement in the past started because the proponents of the movement wanted to liberate themselves from a dogmatic or prevalent style. Imagism was born due to the prevalence of Romanticism in literature. Romanticism focused on writing vivid verses of inward feelings, describing in detail how something simple invoked a feeling that usually arises from something magnificent.
Romanticism came after the Enlightenment-era where everything was very formal and scientific. Imagism was the precursor to Modernism in poetry. What Imagism did was to take any subject that the poet liked and describe it but with the already mentioned method; short, compact, and to the point.
So in Romanticism, you can have Wordsworth write a beautiful, detailed poem about daffodils and how the fields of the yellow flowers and the white fluffy clouds made him feel such a profound experience, in Imagism, it would be just “Golden, dancing daffodils”. This is also what made imagist poems so unique and eye-catching.
[quads id=1]
Who started imagism?
As it is with every form of art, there are always some artists who experiment and divert from the general flow. This experiment can be seen in T.E Hulme’s A City Sunset and Autumn. Take a look at these poems;
Autumn
A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.
A City Sunset
Alluring, Earth seducing, with high conceits
is the sunset that reigns
at the end of westward streets. …
A sudden flaring sky
troubling strangely the passer by
with visions, alien to long streets, of Cytharea
or the smooth flesh of Lady Castlemaine. …
A frolic of crimson
is the spreading glory of the sky,
heaven’s jocund maid
flaunting a trailed red robe
along the fretted city roofs
about the time of homeward going crowds
— a vain maid, lingering, loth to go. …
Look at both of these poems and notice how concise and condensed these poems are, yet at the same time, they are so unlike poems by Wordsworth or P.B Shelley. The language in the poem, the words speak poetry and the adjective describes what the poet saw or felt, but it is on point without any rhetorics.
Hulme may have ignited the spark of imagist poetry, it was Ezra Pound who created the flame. We won’t be diving into the history and intricacies of this movement (since the subject here is poetry and not history and we want to be concise and on point).
Hulme formed a group with some other poets with similar ideas about their style of poetry. He formed a group of poets and called it the Secession group (which means breakaway group). This group was also called as the Eiffel Tower group (Not related to Eiffel Tower in Paris, but a restaurant in London). In 1909, Ezra Pound was introduced to this group and he started the flame in