1. This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
2. IMAGISM
Reported by: Miss Florabel M. Biasong
Abuyod National High School
Teresa, Rizal
3. Imagism Defined
Imagism is a name given to
a movement in poetry,
originating in 1912, aiming
at clarity of expression
through the use of precise
visual images.
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/imagism-
def.html
4. The Imagists
A group of American and English
poets whose poetic program was
formulated about 1912 by Ezra
Pound. The imagists wrote succinct
verse of dry clarity and hard outline
in which an exact visual image made
a total poetic statement.
5. D.H.
F.S.
Lawrence
Flint
Richard Amy
Aldington Lowell
Ezra
Found
H.D. John
Hilda Gould
Doolittle Fletcher
6. Forerunners
of Imagism
Imagism, as a movement, is
often credited to have started
with T.E. Hulme, who created the
Poet's Club in 1908.
After the death of T.E. Hulme,
Ezra Pound spread the idea of
"dry, hard, classical verse“
7. Tenets of Imagism
Ezra Found
1. Direct treatment of the "thing,"
whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does
not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in
sequence of the musical phrase, not in
sequence of the metronome”
8. Tenets of Imagism…
1. To use the language of
common speech, but to
employ always the exact
word, not the nearly-exact,
nor the merely decorative
word.
Amy Lowell
9. Avoid inversions and clichés of
the old poetic jargon
Example of inversion:
Yourself, how do you do,
Very well, you I thank.
Example of the old poetic jargon:
To ope my eyes
Upon the Ethiope splendour
Of the spangled night.
10. Exact word which conveys the
writer’s impression to the reader
must be used.
Example :
Great heaps of shiny glass
Pricked out of the stubble
By a full, high moon.
11. Tenets of Imagism…
2. To create new rhythms –
as the expression of new
moods – and not copy old
rhythms which merely echo
old moods.
(New cadence means new idea.)
12. Tenets of Imagism…
3. To allow absolute freedom
in the choice of subject.
4. To present an image (hence
the name ‘imagist’)
(Poetry should render
particulars exactly and not
deal in vague generalities.)
13. Example:
“The Calm”
At noon I shall see waves flashing,
White power of spray.
The streamers, stately
Kick up white puffs of spray behind them.
The boiling wake
Merges in the blue-black mirror of the sea.
14. Tenets of Imagism…
5. To produce poetry that is
hard and clear, never
blurred nor indefinite.
(This does not refer to
subject but to rendering
of subject.)
16. Sea Garden (H.D.)
Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf,
In the Station of the Metro
you are flung on the sand,
Ezra Pound
you are lifted
in the crisp sand The apparition of these
that drives in the wind. faces in the crowd;
Can the spice-rose Petals on a wet black
drip such acrid fragrance bough.
hardened in a leaf?
