30 Poems in 30 Days: Imagism
September 18, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
This is Day 15 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
The Imagism Movement
For the past week or so we have been discussing meter and rhythm as a framework for creating poetry. Today I want to move in another direction. The use of the image as the primary driving force behind your poem. Image driven poetry began with the Imagism movement in the early twentieth century. The movement began with poets such as Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and eventually dovetailed into the Modernist movement as exemplified by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, for which Ezra Pound was the editor.
There are three basic rules that the imagists followed:
- 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 sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.
Ezra Pound’s most famous application of this concept was the poem:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The concept, as exemplified in Metro, was to reduce a poem down to its most essential images, leaving out all the chaff that traditional poetry, especially iambic pentameter, seems so prone to. This does not mean that most poems should only be two lines, but rather that poetry should not waste time or space.
The Imagist and Modernist movements began the path that eventually led to today’s widespread use of free verse over meter and rhyme. While the Imagist movement itself was fairly short-lived and not widely embraced (Wallace Stevens famously commented that “Not all objects are equal. The vice of imagism was that it did not recognize this”) it opened up the possibilities of poetry and influenced future movements such as the Objectivists and the Beats.
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Write a poem that follows the three rules of the imagists.
Today’s Featured Poet
Jane Gentry is the poet Laureate for the state of Kentucky, and her poetry is strongly influenced by the region. She writes poems about nature, family, and the everyday world. I felt she was appropriate for today discussion because the title poem of her newest work, Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig, is a reference to one of the original modernists, James Joyce.
Books
Portrait of the Artist As a White Pig
Sample poems, including Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig
Um, not very musical. Please elaborate on point 3. Sequence of the metronome I understand. Sequence of the musical phrase is … ?
Hi Rosemary,
When considering the term musical phrase, the key word is phrase. It is a piece of a larger thought (sentence), but it stands alone as a distinguishable unit. “Petals on a wet black bow” is a phrase. It is a complete image in its own right and quite coherent, but it isn’t a complete sentence or a full explanation, it is still dependent on the material around it to make a full understanding. I have now included a link in the text to a wikipedia entry about the Musical Phrase.
Thank you, Maestro!
This is a Rhondo Form — A,B,A, with an al fine to complete the form. I tried to eliminate all unessential words, such as a, and, the, however I found that some of them were like a “pick-up” note to the phrase, so I left them in. I am also having a conflict with the use of metaphor — the similie or the personification, which to be.
The Sensei
Like a blue crane on a frozen lake
The Sensei poises on the Do Jo mat
Waiting for the first invisible strike
Perfected by the dark shadow of final form
A one legged stork’s stance upon earth’s axis
His scent of a man odiferous to the prey
He sights the mortal enemy of his mind
The brutal silhouette of rejections
His heart and soul naked before the mele
Black hurricane of lovers and friends betrayal
The opponent is unseen, thin as air before him
The form he executes meticulous, exotic as
A ballerina’s perfected arabesque
Front step, back step, spin and kick
Roundhouse, block and turn, step, step, return
Dark eyes hidding behind the suppressed smile
Sweating body leading the artful forms
Two steps, three steps, jump, kick, fly
The dark secret of his eyes beguile
Across the waxing years
He locks her in
The Sensei poises on the Do Jo mat
Waiting for the first invisible strike
Perfected by the dark shadow of final form
A one legged stork’s stance upon earth’s axis
His scent of a man odiferous to the prey
He sights the mortal enemy of his mind
The brutal silhouette of rejections
His heart and soul naked before the mele
Black hurricane of lovers and friends betrayal
The opponent is unseen, thin as air before him
The form he executes meticulous,
As final as the hooded executioner’s fine blade
Rosemary, the metronome is like a clock, you can set it on any a given number of beats per minute. Many musical pieces have a metronome setting. For example, in a measure of music, there can be four beats, in order to ascertain how fast it goes, you assignmen 60 beats per minute to the piece — to speed it up, you assign 120 beats. Therefore, if a a note of two counts is assigned to a measure of two counts, a half note, gets one beat, it would be much faster at 60 beats per minute than a quarter note (which gets one beat) is at 60 beats per minute in a measure of four — the same number of notes would be executed in half the time, or vice versa if the notes are allocated in proportion, hahahaha ! ! ! Don’t you love it . . . . At best we can only aspire to the musical phrase — here is another example that I came up with while working on my master’s, to compare the sentence with music and with physics — Kenneth Pike gave us particle, wave and field. Let me see if I can recall the analogy, the particle is the thing itself (subject or part A of the Rhondo) the wave is the movement (the verb or the B part of the Rhondo) and the field — is the whole of the thing (the direct object or the finalalized completed recaptitulation of A). Well, we can think these things out, and I think it is good to do this from time to time, but in the final end of things, I believe we must assign it to the subconscious to do the work and just write.
Thanks for that explanation Connie!
Bewitching poem Connie! Very ne plus ultra. It really touched a nerve; I just received my orange belt in Tae Kwon Do on Friday and I must say it has been both rewarding and incredibly… uninhibiting. I’ve had to look inside myself more than I would like to and what I find is not always pleasing to discover.
Hi Sandra, oh me, the living poem, I think I am going to change the last line to “veiled executioners wand”
Perhaps I am too literal minded? I like the last line as is, like your suggested alteration even better – but would prefer you to keep “blade” as final word. Because it has such finality, lol. “Wand” is just getting too subtle, I think.
Amazing poem! I believe you have done two in one – repetition and imagism? Anyway you certainly make me see him, and the phrases seem musical to me! It’s altogether haunting. Your “conflict with metaphor” for me enhances the depth and mystery.
Connie,
I like your poem as well, but Dark Secret and Dark Shadow border a little on the cliche. You might want to look for other descriptions there. I also like veiled much better than hooded for the same reason.
Blade could work just as well as wand for the esoteric context . . . good suggestion. I wanted to use veiled to suggest alternate gender. Just suggest . . . so blade works well to continue the suggestion. My form is Tang Soo Doo, Soft Hands, its “Master” was female.
John: right call, I have a problem with cliches, I did them on purpose in a previous poem, but this was a slip . . . this will take some work. I’m looking at: opaque, wan, deep, even change shadow to mirror — dark mirror — I love this work with imagery.
Resuming summer dress
My cherry-red drapes me loosely,
floats when I move, dances with me.
Deep armholes show flashes of skin,
my underwear is “nude”.
The slit front and scalloped sides
free my winter-white legs
to stick right out in the sun,
to jig and twist and stride.
Wedding
My arm around her shoulder
Stainless steel ring on my finger
Red boutonnière pinned to my pocket
Both dressed in ivory
Both smiling
Her red and pale
Me a tan wide tower
Tilted arch of flowers behind us
The gazebo
The backyard wall
Trees and the sky beyond
John: I can see it all – except “Her red and pale / Me a tan wide tower”. Doesn’t quite gel for me with both being dressed in ivory. You could drop those lines altogether and still give us the picture. In fact I think that would make it the lovely poem it so very nearly is now. That ending’s just perfect.
Thank you for your thoughts Rosemary, I will think about that in revision.
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Imagism [...]
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Imagism [...]
[...] I want to discuss imagery. Imagery is not to be confused with imagism, which I discussed during the 30 Poems in 30 Days project. Imagism was a poetic movement. Imagery is simply the use of images in a poem. No matter [...]
Cone
Dog’s nose going deep, deep into
the cone of the flower,
like a mustached man in a sweater vest
with an ear pressed against
an old phone piece
ending in a funnel.
Saul Nadatas last blog post..Cone
Wow this is really cool, I’d like to give this assignment a try. Poetry is just one of those things I’ve always wanted to do but just never have. I’ll subscribe to the RSS feed!