Toma Andra-Florentina, year III

Group 6, Japanese
Course prof. Diana Benea

To what extent is imagism a continuation of European modernist poetry?

School of Images

A group of poets from London who started meeting in the year 1909;
Leading members: F.S. Flint & T.E. Hulme;
were keenly interested in Continental philosophy, particularly Nietzsche and Henri
Bergson, as well as French Symbolist poetry and vers libre; (Carr, p.167)
=>they wanted to transmit symbolic images without using unnecessary words, and
without using a conventional meter;
They were inspired by haiku -> (for Flint) a form of expression, like the Japanese; in
which the image is a resonant heart of an exquisite moment. (qtd. From Carr, p.168)

Ezra Pound

The one who coined the term imagism(Imagisme);

Imagism evolved as a reaction against abstraction in favor of precision.(Nadel, p.2)
He was a part of the group for a short period and took to their ideas; however he was
stricter than them in practice;
A Few Donts by an Imagiste -> a short essay in which Pound talks about what should
not be done when trying to create an image through poetry;
An Image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an
instant of time.
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
Dont be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much
better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it.
Dont imagine that a thing will go in verse just because its too dull to go in
prose.

In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Autumn (T. E. Hulme)

 Toma Andra-Florentina, year III
Group 6, Japanese
Course prof. Diana Benea

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.

WORKS CITED
Carr, Hellen. "Edwardian, Georgian, Imagist, Vorticist, and Amygist Poetry." A History of
Modernist Poetry. New York: Cambridge UP, 2015. N. pag157-185. Print.
Hulme, T. E. Autumn. Web, 32 April.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44431
Nadel, Ira. The Cambridge Introduction to Ezra Pound. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.
Pound, Ezra. A Few Donts by an Imagiste. Web, 21 April.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/detail/58900
Pound, Ezra. In a Station of the Metro. Web, 21 April.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/station-metro