An article by Abayomi Folaranmi.
"A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
-W.B YEATS
The short-lived Imagist movement was one the most influential of the 20th century. Spearheaded complicated iconoclast and literary talent hunter, Ezra Pound (who I daresay is one the greatest literary figures of the last century), the movement set out its principles as such:
- Direct treatment of the "thing" whether subjective or objective.
- To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
- As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
These rules were first outlined by Pound and two other founding Imagists, H.D. (as was Hilda Doolittle’s pseudonym) and Richard Adlington in 1912. The manifesto of the original group is set out in more detail and clarity by Pound in his essays ‘Retrospect’ and ‘A Few Don’ts’ than I can hope to achieve in this article; they are worth looking into. (I say ‘original group’ in the previous sentence because of what Pound considered the corruption of the movement by American poet Amy Lowell. This he called ‘amygism’, and after failing to persuade Lowell to drop the title ‘Imagist’, he renounced the movement altogether.)
