Imagism

Imagism was an early twentieth-century poetry movement that favored precise images, clear language, and economy of expression over elaborate poetic conventions.

Ezra Pound: An American poet and critic who helped establish Imagism and shaped modernist poetry. Pound coined the movement’s name and promoted its central principles.
In a Station of the Metro: A two-line poem by Ezra Pound that compares faces in a Paris metro station to petals on a wet branch. Pound’s brief poem demonstrates Imagist compression and the juxtaposition of concrete images.
Poets’ Club: A London literary society founded by T. E. Hulme in 1908. Hulme’s club brought together writers whose discussions helped shape Imagism’s early ideas.
William Carlos Williams: An American modernist poet known for poems grounded in ordinary speech and objects. Williams carried Imagist attention to particular things into a distinct, long-running poetic practice.
H.D.: The pen name of poet Hilda Doolittle, whose early poems became central examples of Imagist writing. Her compressed poems showed how a sharply rendered image could carry a poem.
The Red Wheelbarrow: A short poem by William Carlos Williams built around a red wheelbarrow and nearby objects after rain. Its plain diction and concentrated observation extend techniques associated with Imagism.
F. S. Flint: An English poet and critic who helped define and publicize Imagism. Flint’s essays recorded the movement’s early principles and its London origins.
Marianne Moore: An American modernist poet known for precise observation, intricate forms, and quotations from other texts. Her exact descriptions share Imagism’s resistance to vague poetic generalization.
Richard Aldington: An English poet and novelist associated with the early Imagist movement. Aldington helped formulate Imagism and contributed poems to its first major anthology.
The Image: A 1913 statement by Ezra Pound defining an image as an intellectual and emotional complex presented in an instant. Pound’s definition gives the movement’s central poetic unit a concise formulation.

Linked from 36 pages