Literary History

Symbolist and Imagist Poetry

Overview
The English novelist Virginia Woolf stated that human nature underwent a fundamental change “on or about December 1910.” Just as the country was experiencing the rapid changes brought by the Industrial Revolution, writers sought a way to break with the past and create new methods of literary expression.

Symbolism began as a literary movement in the late nineteenth century. Symbolism dominated French poetry and was characterized by metaphor and imagery instead of obvious detail. It was more conceptual than literal. The French poet Stéphane Mallarmé said of Symbolism, “Suggestion, that is the dream.”

American Imagists were influenced by the French Symbolists. These writers explored the inner workings of the mind and captured these thoughts in metaphor and symbols. Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolitte (H. D.), and Richard Aldington were the most prominent writers of the Imagist movement. Ezra Pound officially started the Imagist movement when he submitted a poem by his friend Hilda Doolittle to Poetry magazine and signed the poem “H. D. Imagiste.”

Imagists utilized economy of language in their poetry. Their principles were to use compressed, exacting phrases to convey an immediate image or feeling. To them Romantic verse was excessive and flowery. Imagists sought expression and drama with lean, terse language. In Pound’s words, an image was “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.”

Bibliography
Collected Poems, 1912–1944. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1986. A collection of poems by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) on subjects such as Greece and its culture and love and death.

A Season in Hell and the Drunken Boat. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961. Two of French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s masterpieces in English and French: A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat.

The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. I: 1909–1939. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1991. The first part of an anthology of Williams’s poetry, including the well-known “Spring and All.”

Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1982. This is a good introduction to the work of the leading American Imagist, Ezra Pound.

The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. Japanese haiku poetry consists of seventeen syllables, usually divided into three lines. The Imagists were highly influenced by Japanese and Chinese poetry. Here is an introduction to the history of haiku, from 1488 to 1902 and poems from masters such as Bashō.

Web links
poets.org: William Carlos Williams
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/119
Read the biography of American poet William Carlos Williams, one of the most prominent Imagists. Follow the links to some of his works and biographies of other poets that were influenced by Williams, including Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Harriet Monroe and the “Imagists”
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/orient/mod2.htm
Here is an introduction to Harriet Monroe’s relationship with the Imagist poets and her founding of Poetry magazine. You will also find links to twentieth-century American Modernists such as Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, and Thornton Wilder.

Introduction: Haikai, Hokku, Haiku
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/eacp/asiasite/topics/?topic=Haiku+subtopic=Intro A comprehensive resource to the classic form of Japanese poetry: haiku. The Imagists were influenced by the stark, condensed form of haiku.

Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/Maps/poets/g_l/amylowell/lowell.htm
Read about Amy Lowell’s life and prolific career as a poet. Follow the links to her poems and images of her book covers and jackets.