Imagism

The modernist program of hard, clear images and exact words, led by Pound in prewar London.

Specifications & Metrics

era

1912 – 1917

region

London, with American and expatriate poets

key figures

Ezra Pound, H.D., Amy Lowell, Richard Aldington

exemplar

'In a Station of the Metro' (1913)

introduced

1912

Core Principles & Analysis

• Pound's three rules demanded direct treatment of the thing and no word that did no work.
• Japanese haiku was its decisive formal inspiration.
• Its clarity prepared the ground for Eliot's and Williams's modernism.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Imagism