Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that rejected the sentiment and artifice of Romantic and Victorian poetry as well as the contemporary Georgian poets in favour of precision of imagery in clear, sharp language. Group publication of work under the Imagist name in magazines and in four anthologies appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured writing by many of the most significant figures in Modernist poetry in English, as well as a number of other Modernist figures who were to be prominent in fields other than poetry.

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Based in London, the Imagists were drawn from Britain, Ireland and the United States and, somewhat unusually for the time, 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 rep?re usually and conveniently taken as the starting-point of modern poetry is the group denominated 'imagists' (sic) in London about 1910."

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Emerging in a period that valued the moralising writings of Longfellow and Tennyson as the paragons for poetry, 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, but with the difference that Imagism isolates its object through the use of what Ezra Pound called "luminous details" while Cubism synthesises a single image from multiple perspectives.

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20th-century: The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is often considered incorrect due to the nonexistence of a "Year Zero" before AD 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s)...

Poetry: Poetry (ancient Greek: ????? (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user...

Romantic: "Romantic" and "romanticism" have a number of uses:...