Did the Imagist Movement End?
I have wondered if it’d be acceptable to call myself an ‘imagist poet.’ I’ve really only had that goal in poetry, always loving imagist poetry but never really feeling like the purpose of imagism was achieved. Or were their rules too narrow?
The Short, Happy Life of Imagism
When you look up the Imagist movement, it seemed to have only lasted from 1912-1917. This is strange because I have written many imagist poems. I don’t feel like the movement ended. There are just a few practitioners of the form.
But many write in an imagistic way from time to time. In other words, the movement never ended. People just drift away from trends, always wanting to be original and write truthfully, which is their own style.
Imagism seems more natural, close to nature, using the senses. To me, saying ‘imagist poet’ is clearer than saying ‘nature poet,’ because nature means everything that ever exists, including people, plants, animals, planets, the entire universe.
Imagism: What is it?
Imagism is simply images you see, told through the five senses and interpreted by the soul. But we view life through the lens of our eyes, and we just so happen to live in a place where trees are green and the world is mostly an ocean, while another planet may be mostly land and have different gravity (and so on).
Anyway, imagism is the nature of this world, what we experience, and usually means observing without thought, then analyzing these images we see, as if we are just born and must interpret this strange place. The subconscious mind, where our beliefs are, will interpret these images.
An Example of an Image
The ‘Tree of Life’ analogy might be the perfect example. The leaf falls, nourishes the roots of the tree, then becomes the tree itself: a constant cycle of life. There was no beginning or end. There’s only now, no before or after. Then, if I forget the past, I live now and describe what I see.
The world, to me, is mostly good. The news makes it mostly bad. Between these two states, life is balanced. There is no light without dark, as you’ve probably heard and seen. Night gives flowers and animals rest. Day gives them energy and life. They complement one another.
Perception of the Image
With images, we see life clearly. Reality is what I see. What I feel is an interpretation from my deeper self. A withered flower is beautiful to one person and ugly to another. We interpret these images and call our interpretations facts, but they are opinions. Some find war to be lovely; others call war evil and a step back in development.
However, imagists rejected romanticism. So, if you think positively of the world, as a poet, you would not be an imagist. Sorry, not in the clubs rules. In other words, my romantic poems that interpret the world as beautiful would not be imagism. They’d be romanticism.
Why did imagism only last five years? Because their rules were very narrow. They may look at the grime and poverty of a city, but not the beauty of laughing children in these poverty-ridden streets. A child in poverty may not realize it. Our perceptions are a reflection of our environment.
This isn’t defending poverty. I’m only stating that we know little about how others feel and think. We project our thoughts and feelings onto the outer world and call them true.
Products of Our Environment
Focus on good things and you may see more good things appear in your life. I focus on peaceful images in nature, because they are what I see. If I lived in a warzone, I would write about a tree’s leaves covered by the dust of the bombed church.
So, you see, we reflect our environment and must be careful to create clear images of a better world. Imagism, then, is what we see and how we feel about what we see.
“The sun climbed down
from each gold leaf
and stepped its toes
very lightly on the forest floor
to sit with a newborn fawn. ”