Write a short note on Imagist Poetry

Write a short note on Imagist Poetry

Ans. During the second decade of the Modern Century (20th century), a few poets started a violent reaction against the trends of the Georgian Poetry, They vehemently revolted and criticized the Georgian poetry as futile and loose. These poets are known as the Imagists. Write a short note on Imagist Poetry

Imagist poetry

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It was Ezra pound who had coined the term Imagism’ to denote the principles agreed on by himself. The members of such a literary group were formed in London in 1912. In a broad sense, such a new trend in thoughts and ideas took shape of a literary movement.

The Imagists adopted the tenets of English and American modernism. The defied the Romantic and the Victorian tradition in literary creations. As a stylistic program, such a trend manifested the desires of the post-symbolists.

Imagism in poetry

It was an open consensus with the pre-war generation for a more precise and objective medium. The Imagists aimed at hard, clear and brilliant effects in place of dreamy vagueness of 19th-century poetry. They defined poetry as the presentation of a visual situation in the fewest possible concrete words.

The Imagists’ poetry was led by T. E. Hulme and was followed by Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle. Ezra pound had observed that an image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instinct of time.

Imagist movement in poetry

The typical Imagist poem is written in Free Verse and its thoughts in an exact and terse manner as possible. The Imagist poem should be responsive to a visual object or scene. The impression of ideas is rendered using Metaphor or by juxtaposing a description of an object.

The Imagist poems are superb in the degree of concentration. Revolting against the Romantic extravagance in thought and expression, the Imagist movement adopted certain objects.

They employed the language of common speech, preferring the exact word to the merely decorative. It created new rhythms including free verse, as the expression of new modes. It allowed absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It replaced vague descriptions by an exact Image.

It also applied the utmost economy in the use of words. Fundamentally, Imagists applied recall to economy and discipline. It proved to be the inception of modern poetry.

Almost all major poets including William Butler Yeats, Thomas Stearns Eliot, and Wallace Stevens had felt strange exposes the influence of the Imagist’ experiments with precise, clear Images, juxtaposed without expressed connection.

The Imagists like Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, F. S. Flints, Richard Adlington and Amy Lowell expressed their ideas through the new rhythmic effect of the free verse. They concentrated upon the creation of sharp and precisely delineated images in the language of common people.

Characteristics of imagist poetry

The Imagists brought out three volumes of Imagist poetry between 1905-1917. The pursuit of concise images and the use of verse libre often led to obscurity. This movement was strongly criticized and quickly died out.

But the conception of visualized concrete Image on the distinctive ideas of later poets and its effect is particularly visualized in the poetry of T. S. Eliot.

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Imagist poetry characteristics