Prompt: Imagism and Ezra Pound

Pound

Though Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry, his views and politics were controversial during his lifetime and still now.

In the early days of the 20th century, he created an exchange of ideas between British and American writers. He helped promote the writing and influenced contemporaries such as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and T. S. Eliot.

In his dedication for his poem "The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot called Pound "il miglior fabbro" (the better craftsman), which was Dante's term for the Troubadour poet Arnaut Daniel.

Pound promoted Imagism, a movement in poetry that was heavily influenced by classical Chinese and Japanese poetry.

Imagism stressed clarity, precision, and economy of language. It did not encourage the use of traditional rhyme and meter.

The Imagists rejected the styles of much Romantic and Victorian poetry exemplified by Longfellow and Tennyson who were popular at the time.

Imagism's focus on "the thing" as thing" was the attempt at isolating a single image to reveal its essence. This idea was also popular in avant-garde art at the time, especially Cubism.

In Poetry magazine, Pound described "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste" and an essay entitled "Imagisme" that gave this advice:

1. Direct treatment of the "thing", whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

The first poem by him I encountered as a student is the often-anthologized, haiku-like

In a Station of the Metro

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

I really liked that short poem, though I couldn't say very much about it. (Read what Mark Doty said about the poem in a workshop.)

It was much later that I later encountered his poem "Taking Leave of a Friend" which I used this month as a model for our writing prompt.

A contemporary poet, William Carlos Williams received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams' writing. In 1913, Pound arranged for the London publication of Williams's second collection, The Tempers.

You can see Pound's influence in some of Williams' most famous short poems such as "The Red Wheelbarrow"-

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

and the poem

and his poem "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

Our writing prompt for July is a poem in Pound's imagist style. By that I mean a poem that is (probably) short, stripped of excessive language, directly treating a "thing" (subjective or objective), without traditional rhyme or meter but perhaps with rhythm (as in a musical phrase), and focuses on one single image.

If you look at some of the other Selected Poems of Ezra Pound you will find that he departed from Imagism in his own poetry later, as in The Cantos, which occupied his literary attention in the last part of his life.


Literary Essays of Ezra Pound
A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound

Imagism and Natural Landscape

I read the poem "The Changing Light" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and thought of some photographs I had taken in San Francisco many years ago. There was something about the light. It wasn't East Coast light.

That poem is from his book How to Paint Sunlight (New Directions,2001) and in the foreword he wrote: "All I ever wanted was to paint light on the walls of life. These poems are another attempt to do it."

I also couldn't help but think about Carl Sandburg's "Fog."

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

That's a poem I read a few times in school classrooms and probably had an English teacher use it for a lesson in imagism. That was the name given to a movement in poetry in the early 20th century and represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others. It aimed at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images.

A few other poems that might have been in that section of the anthology:

In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound

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

and the poem that is sometimes called "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. He actually left it untitled but for a number when it was first published. (I think it should be untitled.)

XXII

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Are all imagist poems so short? No, but many are rather brief. Still, people have a lot to say about a little poem like Williams' "XXII."

I thought this month you might try your hand at a poem that is very much anchored in an outdoor place. Your poem does not need to be purely an exercise in imagism, but it should bring into it the light, the weather and the natural atmosphere of the place. A kind of natural landscape should be present in the poem. Beyond that informal form, if you choose to have something else going on in the poem, all the better.

I was also reading a book about Robert Frost this week and in one section Frost said that a poem should have several doors in it - but the poem shouldn't open them. I'd say that's good advice for this prompt too.