Springtime with the Imagist Poets

One style of modern poetry is called Imagist Poetry. This is poetry that "describes images with simple language and great focus." It is a departure from classic poetry with contrived detail, rhyme, and highly philosophized language. Here there is a greater simplicity and purity. It is an offshoot of the free verse pioneered by Whitman.

Several major Imagist poets in America are Ezra Pound, William Carolos Williams, H.D., and Amy Lowell.

Ezra Pound, one of the founders of Imagism, said that there were three tenets, or rules, to writing Imagist poetry:

1. Direct treatment of the subject. That is, the poem should deal directly with what's being talked about, not try to use fancy words and phrases to talk about it.
2. Use of no word that does not contribute to the presentation. Use as few words as possible.
3. Compose in the rhythm of the musical phrase, not in the rhythm of the metronome. In other words, create new rhythms instead of relying on the old, boring ones

(excerpted from educationportal.com)

Here are examples of Imagist poetry about Spring by Amy Lowell. The three poems below are part of a larger series wherein in she chronicles the magic of Spring in her daily life.

 Spring Day [Bath] by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

 

Spring  [Breakfast Table]

In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee-pot, hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl—and my eyes begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts. Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream, flutter, call: “Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!” Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.
Spring [Night and Sleep]

The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Electric signs gleam out along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow, and grow, and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades scream in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab, snap, that means a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is the sidelong sliver of a watchmaker’s sign with its length on another street. A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall building, but the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours?
  I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take me back to my trees and my quietness. The breeze which blows with me is fresh-washed and clean, it has come but recently from the high sky. There are no flowers in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus.
  My room is tranquil and friendly. Out of the window I can see the distant city, a band of twinkling gems, little flower-heads with no stems. I cannot see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restaurants and shops I passed, now the signs blur and all together make the city, glowing on a night of fine weather, like a garden stirring and blowing for the Spring.
  The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air.
  Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears. The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters queer tales of old days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping their horses down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky when it is fresh-washed and fair . . . I smell the stars . . . they are like tulips and narcissus . . . I smell them in the air.

 

 

I really like how these poems are evocative snapshots, verbal photographs of the sensations of her day.

 

Another famous poem about Spring is from Imagist poet, William Carlos Williams:

 

Spring and All [By the Road to the contagious hospital]

 

I

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the

waste of broad, muddy fields

brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water

the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish

purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy

stuff of bushes and small trees

with dead, brown leaves under them

leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish

dazed spring approaches-

 

This is a more bleak characterization of Spring, waking itself from death and decay, even contagion, to rise anew.