Engl 20923, Lit and Civ II
Williams, Spring 2011
Images and Imagism

Imagery is a term used to refer to figurative language. An image is understood to be a reproduction of a form (a something or some one). Imagery refers to vivid language that creates mental pictures or impressions.

During the early part of the twentieth century certain modernist poets decided to focus on the imagery of their poems as an act of rebellion against the overwrought and exaggerated poetic language of the nineteenth century. These poets tended to condense their poems to specific sets of images and generally became known as Imagists (and their poetry imagism).

Thus Imagism is a doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and British poets (who called themselves Imagists). Writing in the early decades of the twentieth century, the Imagists were led by Ezra Pound, HD, and Amy Lowell, and generally the Imagists rejected most of nineteenth-century poetry as being over written, overly sentimental, and overly conventional. The Imagists intended to create a new kind of poetry that developed a new clarity and exactness in the short lyric. Influenced by Japanese haiku, the Imagists cultivated concision and directness. Images—rather than asides or explanations—were intended to convey meaning. Imagists also preferred the looser cadences and rhythms of free verse rather than traditional meter. The typical imagist poem attempts to render as exactly and tersely as possible, without comment or generalization, the poet’s response to a visual object or scene. Often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor, or by juxtaposing a description of one object with that of a second or diverse object.

Consider Pound’s famous imagist poem:

In a Station of the Metro

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

Or William Carlos Williams’ famous imagist poem:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside white
chickens.