Imagism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Based in London, the Imagists were drawn from Britain, Ireland and the United States. Though somewhat unusual for the time, the Imagists featured a number of women writers amongst their major figures. Historically, Imagism is also significant because it was the first organised Modernist English language literary movement or group. In the words of T.S. Eliot; "The point de repère usually and conveniently taken as the starting-point of modern poetry is the group denominated 'imagists' (sic) in London about 1910."
At the time Imagism emerged, Longfellow and Tennyson were considered the paragons for poetry, and the public valued the sometimes moralising tone of their writings. In contrast to this, Imagism called for a return to what were seen as more Classical values, such as directness of presentation, and economy of language, as well as a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms. The focus on the "thing" as "thing" (an attempt at isolating a single image to reveal its essence) also mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism. Although Imagism isolates objects through the use of what Ezra Pound called "luminous details", Pound's Ideogrammic Method of juxtaposing concrete instances to express an abstraction, is similar to the way in which Cubism synthesizes a single image from multiple perspectives.