Plato's allegory of the cave painting

PART 1

American Landscape, c. 1930. Charles Sheeler. Oil on canvas, 24 x 31 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.”

—Carl Sandburg, “Poetry Considered”

MODERN POETRY

The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

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LITERARY H ISTORY

Symbolist and Imagist Poetry

PHOTOGRAPHERS CAPTURE MOMENTS in time. Painters depict visual ideas through arrangements of colors and shapes. What methods allow writers to use words as someone else might use a camera or a paintbrush? In the beginning of the modern age, a group of poets called the Imagists developed new, influential techniques for presenting visual impressions. Much of their inspiration came from the Symbolists, across the Atlantic Ocean, in France.

The Symbolist Foundation The avant-garde, or experimental, Symbolist move- ment in Paris dominated French poetry and art in the late 1800s and inspired the Imagists. Symbolist poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine reacted against Realism by focusing their attention inward on moods and sensations. These poets believed that direct explanation could not capture emotion. They sought access to the inner workings of the mind through sug- gestion, metaphor, and symbols. The Symbolists took inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, whose work is rich in symbolism.

“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, and not from life.”

—Ezra Pound “A Retrospect”

The American Imagists Contrasting with the Symbolists’ abstract, atmo- spheric poetry, the Imagists presented a concrete, tangible image that appeared frozen in time. “Essentially, it is a moment of revealed truth,” wrote critic William Pratt on Imagism. In that sense, the

Imagist method is similar to photography. Beyond that, however, Imagist poetry explores the effect of the image on an observer at a precise moment.

“In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound (see page 654) is a classic example of an Imagist poem. Pound responded to the sight of faces in a train station. Pound deleted words to condense a first draft of thirty lines into two lines of fourteen words and two striking images. He believed that the poet should “use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something.” He found a model for this intense com- pression in Asian poetry, such as in this haiku (three lines, seventeen syllables, in the original) by Japanese poet Matsuo Basho:

On a dead limb squats a crow– Autumn night. (Lucien Stryk translation)

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The Flatiron Building, Evening, from Camera Work, April, 1906. Edward Steichen.

RÈunion des MusÈes Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

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LITERARY HISTORY 651

In 1912 Pound submitted three poems by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) to Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. One of the published poems was “Oread” (following). In Greek mythology, the Oreads were nymphs, minor female divinities of nature, from the mountains. Notice the irregular, jagged look of the lines and how the line breaks are determined by the poet’s sense of imagery.

Whirl up, sea— Whirl your pointed pines, Splash your great pines On our rocks. Hurl your green over us— Cover us with your pools of fir.

H.D. and Amy Lowell were central figures in the Imagist movement. At a poetry reading, Lowell reportedly said to her audience, “Well, clap or hiss, I don’t care which, but . . . do something!” Such bold statements energized American poetry, which often displays the Imagist method of compressing an emo- tion or idea into a sharply observed image.

Imagist Principles The Imagists issued manifestos, or public declarations on their poetic principles. The following are sample manifestos in the style of those issued:

• The image is the essence, the raw material, of poetry.

• Poetry should be expressed in brief, clear, concrete language that forms precise images.

• These images should instantly convey to the reader the poem’s meaning and emotion.

• The language of these poetic images should sound like simple speech—not be made up of predictable rhythms and rhymes but of freer, more-modern verse forms.

• Topics for poems need not be high-minded or “poetic.” No topic is unsuitable for a poem.

Sudden Rain Shower on Ohashi Bridge, from One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, 1850. Ando Hiroshige. Woodblock print. Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, Paris. Viewing the Art: This wood-block print recalls the style of Japanese haiku masters such as Basho. What does this print have in common with Imagism?

Literary History For more about Symbolist and Imagist poetry, go to www.glencoe.com.

RESPONDING AND THINKING CRITICALLY

1. Why did the Symbolist poets refrain from directly explaining their themes?

2. What did the Imagists want to eliminate from poetry? Why?

3. What type of images does H.D. create in “Oread”? What impressions and associations do they evoke?

4. Compare and contrast the ways in which the poems on these two pages reflect the themes of Imagist poets. Which do you find most interesting?

Ando Hiroshige/Art Resource, NY

• Compare and contrast authors’ messages. • Analyze historical context. • Evaluate argument.

OBJECTIVES

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David Lees/CORBIS

BEFORE YOU READ

In a Station of the Metro and A Pact

MEET EZRA POUND

Though Ezra Pound’s literary accomplish-ments were immense, many hated him. As his friend and protégé William Carlos Williams wrote, “Pound is a fine fellow, but not one person in a thousand likes him, and a great many people detest him.” Nevertheless, T. S. Eliot claimed that Pound was “more responsible for the twentieth-century revolution in poetry than [was] any other individual.”

Imagism Pound was born in a small town in Idaho, but two years later his family moved east. When he was still young, he determined that “at thirty [he] would know more about poetry than any living man.” Pound entered the University of Pennsylvania at age fifteen but completed his undergraduate education at Hamilton College. As a student, he immersed himself in the Latin, Greek, and French classics.

“I have weathered the storm, I have beaten out my exile.”

—Ezra Pound, “The Rest”

After receiving his master’s degree in 1906, Pound briefly taught languages at a small Presbyterian college in Indiana. His eccentric manner did not fit well with the school’s character, and, at the age of 23, Pound left for Europe. He settled first in London, then Paris, and finally in Italy. There he wrote poetry and criticism and translated verse from nine languages. He also served as an overseas editor for Poetry magazine—a position he used to nurture the careers of Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot, among others. In 1912, Pound helped establish Imagism’s manifesto. It called for “direct treatment of the ‘thing’” and the use of “the language of common speech, but . . . always the exact word.”

A Complex Writer Though Pound declared that writers should “Make it new!” he did not believe in newness for its own sake and relied heavily on the literature of the past. In The Cantos, his longest and best-known work, Pound combined materials from different cultures and languages, historical texts, and newspaper articles. The Cantos is an extremely complex work, notorious for its diffi- culty and uneven quality.

Politics, Prison, and Exile During World War II, Pound supported Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and made radio broadcasts openly criti- cizing the United States and the efforts of the Allies in the war. After Italy fell, Pound spent six months as a prisoner of war near Pisa.