On Lowell, Pound, And Imagism Essay, Research Paper
On Imagism
from Amy Lowell, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1917).
We are now to deal with the work of the small group of poets
known as Imagists. Later, I shall explain just what are the tenets of the Imagist School,
but before beginning on the work of the two poets whose names stand at the head of this
chapter, it is proper to state that they only represent a fraction of the Imagist group.
Of course, any one who writes poetry from the same point of view might be said to write
Imagistic verse, to be an Imagist, in short; but, in speaking of the Imagists as a group,
I shall confine myself to those six poets whose work has appeared in the successive
volumes of the annual anthology, "Some Imagist Poets." These poets are exactly
divided in nationality, three being American, three English. The English members of the
Imagist group are Richard Aldington, F. S. Flint, and D. H. Lawrence, and I regret that
this book, being confined to American poets, leaves me no opportunity to discuss the work
of these Englishmen. The three American Imagists are the lady who writes under the
pseudonym of "H.D.," John Gould Fletcher, and myself. In this chapter,
therefore, I shall consider only the work of "H.D." and John Gould Fletcher.
However individual the work of the six Imagist poets is (and any one of who has read
their anthology cannot fail to have observed it), the poems of "H.D." and Mr.
Fletcher are enough in themselves to show the tendencies and aims of the group.
I suppose few literary movements have been so little understood as Imagism. Only a
short time ago, in the "Yale Review," Professor John Erskine confessed that he
had no clear idea of what was Imagist verse and what was not, and in unconscious proof of
his ignorance, spoke of robert Frost and Edgar Lee Masters as Imagists.
To call a certain kind of writing "a school," and give it a name, is merely a
convenient method of designating it when we wish to speak of it. We have adopted the same
method in regard to distinguishing persons. We say John Smith and James Brown, because it
is simpler than to say: six feet tall, blue eyes, straight nose—or the reverse of
these attributes. Imagist verse is verse which is written in conformity with certain
tenets voluntarily adopted by the poets as being those by which they consider the best
poetry to be produced. They may be right or they may be wrong, but it is their belief.
Imagism, then, is a particular school, springing up within a larger, more comprehensive
movement, the New Movement with which this whole book has had to do [Tendencies in
Modern American Poetry]. This movement has yet received no convenient designation. We,
who are of it, naturally have not the proper perspective to see it in all its historical
significance. But we can safely claim it to be a "renaissance,’ a re-birth of
the spirit of truth and beauty. It means a re-discovery of beauty in our modern world, and
the originality and honesty to affirm that beauty in whatever manner is native to the
poet.
I have shown Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost as the pioneers of the
renaissance; I have shown Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg plunging forward in quest of
change and freedom, hurling themselves against the harshness and materialism of existing
conditions, shouting their beliefs, sometimes raucously, but always honestly and with
abounding courage. Now, I am to show a condition, not changing, but changed. These poets
not only express themselves differently, they see life and the universe from a different
standpoint.
It is not over; the movement is yet in its infancy. Other poets will come and,
perchance, perfect where these men have given the tools. Other writers, forgetting the
stormy times in which this movement had its birth, will inherit in plentitude and calm
that for which they have fought. Then our native flowers will bloom into a great garden,
to be again conventionalized to a pleasance of stone statues and mathematical parterres
awaiting a new change which shall displace it. This is the perpetually recurring history
of literature, and of the world.
I have chosen the Imagists as representing the third stage of the present movement
advisedly, for only in them do I see that complete alteration of point of view necessary
to this third stage. An alteration, let me add, due solely to the beliefs -moral,
religious, and artistic -inherent in the characters of these poets. Honest difference of
opinion leads to honestly different work, and this must not be confused with the absurd
outpourings of those gadflies of the arts who imitate the manners of others without an
inkling of their souls; nor with those nefarious persons who endeavour to keep themselves
before the public by means of a more or less clever charlatanism.
The spoken word, even the written word, is often misunderstood. I do not wish to be
construed as stating that poets in the third stage are better, as poets, than those in the
other two. Fundamental beliefs change art, but do not, necessarily, either improve or
injure it. Great poetry has been written at every stage of the world’s history, but Homer
did not write like Dante, nor Dante like Shakespeare, nor Shakespeare like Edgar Allan
Poe. So, in literary criticism, one may assign a poet his place in a general movement
without any attempt to appraise his individual merit by so doing.
Before taking up the work of "H.D." and John Gould Fletcher in detail, I
think it would be well to consider, for a moment, what Imagism is, and for what those
poets who style themselves " Imagists" stand.
In the preface to the anthology, "Some Imagist Poets," [1916] there is set
down a brief list of tenets to which the poets contributing to it mutually agreed. I do
not mean that they pledged themselves as to a creed. I mean that they all found themselves
in accord upon these simple rules.
I propose to take up these rules presently, one by one, and explain them in detail, but
I will first set them down in order:
1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ
always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms -as the expression of new moods
— and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon
"free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a
principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better
expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry a new cadence means a new
idea.
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject.
It is not good art to write badly of aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it necessarily bad
art to write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value of
modem life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so
old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 19 11.
4. To present an image (hence the name:
"Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should
render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and
sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk
the real difficulties of his art.
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never
blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of
the very essence of poetry.
There is nothing new under the sun, even the word, "renaissance," means a
re-birth not a new birth, and of this the Imagists were well aware. This short creed was
preceded by the following paragraph:
These principles are not new; they have fallen into
desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry, indeed of all great literature.
It is not primarily on account of their forms, as is commonly supposed, that the
Imagist poets represent a changed point of view; it is because of their reactions toward
the world in which they live.
Now let us examine these tenets and see just what they mean, for I have observed that
their very succinctness has often occasioned misunderstanding.
The first one is: "To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact
word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word."
The language of common speech means a diction which carefully excludes inversions, and
the cliches of the old poetic jargon. As to inversions, we only need to remember
Matthew Arnold’s famous parody on this evil practice in his essay, "On Translating
Homer":
Yourself, how do you do,
Very well, you I thank.
But, until very recently, it persisted in our poetry. One of the tenets
in which all the poets of the present movement, Imagists and others, are agreed, however,
is this abhorrence of the inversion.
" Cliche"’ is a French word and means "stamped," as a coin, for
instance. In other words, it is something in common use, and not peculiar to the author.
Old, faded expressions like "battlemented clouds," and "mountainous
seas," are cliches. Excellent the first time, but so worn by use as to convey
no very distinct impression to the reader. As an example of the old poetic jargon, take
such a passage as this:
To ope my eyes
Upon the Ethiope splendour
Of the spangled night.
It will at once be admitted that this is hardly the language of common speech. Common
speech does not exclude imaginative language nor metaphor but it must be original and
natural to the poet himself, not culled from older books of verse.
The exact word has been much misunderstood. it means the exact word which
conveys the writer’s impression to the reader. Critics conceive a thing to be so and so
and no other way. To the poet, the thing is as it appears in relation to the whole. For
instance, he might say:
Great heaps of shiny glass
Pricked out of the stubble
By a full, high moon.
This does not mean that the stones are really of glass, but that they so appear in the
bright moonlight. It is the exact word to describe the effect. In short, the
exactness is determined by the content. The habit of choosing a word as unlike the object
as possible, much in vogue among the would-bemodern poets, is silly, and defeats its own
object. One example of this kind which was brought to my attention some time ago was
"a mauve wind." That is just nonsense. It is not exact in any sense, it
connotes nothing. "Black wind," "white wind," "pale wind,"
all these are colours and therefore do not exactly describe any wind, but they do describe
certain windy effects. "Mauve wind," on the other hand, is merely a straining
after novelty, unguided by common-sense or a feeling for fitness.
So much for the first Imagist tenet. The second: "To create new rhythms-as the
expression of new moods-and not to copy old rhythms which merely echo old moods. . .
cadence means a new idea."
This, of course, refers to the modern practice of writing largely in the free forms. It
is true that modern subjects, modern habits of mind, seem to find more satisfactory
expression in vers libre and "polyphonic prose" than in metrical verse.
It is also true that "a new cadence means a new idea." Not, as has been stated
by hostile critics, that the cadence engenders the idea; quite the contrary, it means that
the idea clothes itself naturally in an appropriate novelty of rhythm. Very slight and
subtle it may be, but adequate. The Imagist poets " do not insist upon free-verse as
the only method of writing poetry." In fact, the group are somewhat divided in their
practice here.
This brings us to the third tenet: "To allow absolute freedom in the choice of
subject." Again, over this passage, misunderstandings have arisen. "How can the
choice of subject be absolutely unrestricted ? "—horrified critics have asked.
The only reply to such a question is that one had supposed One were speaking to people of
common-sense and intelligence. To make this passage intelligible to any others, it would
be necessary to add "within the bounds of good taste." Of course, what one
person might consider good taste another might think the reverse of it; all that the
passage intends to imply is that this group restricts itself to no particular kind of
subject matter. Old, new, actual, literary, anything which excites the creative faculty in
the individual poet, is permissible; they are equally Imagists and poets if they write
about ancient Greece, or about a cluster of chimney-stacks seen out of the window.
Number four says: "To present an image (hence the name ‘Imagist’). We are not a
school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly, and not
deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous."
This paragraph has caused a great deal of confusion. It has been construed to mean that
Imagist poetry is chiefly concerned with the presentation of pictures. Why this should
have come about, considering that the words, "we are not a school of painters,"
were intended to offset any such idea, I do not know. The truth is that
"Imagism," " Imagist," refers more to the manner of presentation than
to the thing presented. It is a kind of technique rather than a choice of subject.
"Imagism" simply means — to quote from the second anthology, " Some
Imagist Poets, 19 16 " " a clear presentation of whatever the author wishes to
convey. Now he may wish to convey a mood of indecision, in which case the poem should be
indecisive; he may wish to bring before his reader the constantly shifting and changing
lights over a landscape, or the varying attitudes of mind of a person under strong
emotion, then his poem must shift and change to present this clearly." Imagism is
presentation, not representation. For instance, Imagists do not speak of the sea as the
"rolling wave" or the "vasty deep," high-sounding, artificial
generalities which convey no exact impression; instead, let us compare these two stanzas
in a poem of Mr. Fletcher’s called "The Calm ":
At noon I shall see waves flashing,
White power of spray.
The steamers, stately,
Kick up white puffs of spray behind them.
The boiling wake
Merges in the blue-black mirror of the sea.
That is an exact image; but here is another from "Tide of Storms," in which
the exactness of the image is augmented by powerful imaginative connotations:
Crooked, crawling tide with long wet fingers
Clutching at the gritty beach in the roar and spurt of spray,
Tide of gales, drunken tide, lava-burst of breakers,
Black ships plunge upon you from sea to sea away.
This vivid "presentation of whatever the author wishes to convey " is closely
allied to the next tenet of the Imagist manifesto, which is: "To produce poetry which
is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite." It must be kept in mind that this
does not refer to subject but to the rendering of subject. I might borrow a metaphor from
another art and call it "faithfulness to the architectural line." Ornament may
be employed, so long as it follows the structural bases of the poem. But poetical jig-saw
work is summarily condemned. That is why, although so much Imagist poetry is metaphorical,
similes are sparingly used. Imagists fear the blurred effect of a too constant change of
picture in the same poem.
The last rule is very simple, it is that " concentration is of the very essence of
poetry." A rule, indeed, as old as art itself, and yet so often lost sight of that it
can hardly be too often affirmed. How many works of art are ruined by a too great
discursiveness! To remain concentrated on the subject, and to know when to stop, are two
cardinal rules in the writing of poetry.
We see therefore that these canons boil down into something like the following succinct
statements: Simplicity and directness of speech; subtlety and beauty of rhythms;
individualistic freedom of idea; clearness and vividness of presentation; and
‘concentration. Not new principles, by any means, as the writers of the preface admit, but
"fallen into desuetude. "
One characteristic of Imagist verse which was not mentioned in this preface, is: