Imagism and Vorticism in Modernism
As well as being among the most significant poets of his time, Pound had a talent for attracting attention. This gift served him well in the early years, when he could pretend to discover rules for making immortal poetry. What he was actually doing was describing the poems he liked and that he and his immediate circle had already written. Clever guy.
In 1912-1913, Pound embraced or invented imagism. Imagism had three major criteria: It had to be
- direct and unornamented,
- economical in its language,
- and composed in free verse (or at least not in any forms of the immediate past).
Pound first branded his lover, the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), who had grown up with him in Pittsburgh, as an "Imagiste." Notice the pretentious spelling! By his criteria, her poems seem to fit. But we can't really say that of others who associated themselves with this short-lived school of poetry.
Though we might tend to use the word "image" interchangeably with "metaphor" or "simile," Pound had something much larger and more complex than this in mind. Pound's definition of an image as "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." D-dang, Pound.
So basically: in a very small space of time an artwork should connect many different ideas that had not been connected up to that point in a new way that would spark emotional and psychological insight. It should also totally change the way people would view the world and the way they would feel about it too. Not too tall an order, right? Sounds easy enough?
By 1914, Imagism (though not the images themselves) had lost its luster for Pound. Too many boring people he'd rather not be associated with were flying this banner. So he cut himself loose from Imagism and now proclaimed himself and the visual artists, musicians, sculptors, and writers he embraced to be Vorticists.
Pound founded a journal, Blast, in June of 1914 to present the works associated with this movement.
The characteristics of Vorticism—which sounds kind of sci-fi to us—sound a lot like those of Imagism, though the description of Vorticism referred to all the arts, and not just poetry. Pound described a vortex as "a radiant node or cluster […] from which and into which ideas are constantly rushing." Sounds like a hurricane or a black hole.
What's our takeaway from all this (besides that the all-important strategy of rebranding can apply even to poets)? Simple: cram as many ideas, as beautifully as possible, into your artwork.
Chew On This
With some judicious editing by Pound, the poem "Oread," by H.D. becomes the definition of an Imagist poem. In fact, it was while Pound was reading through H.D.'s poetry that he first got the idea for Imagism in the first place. Psst: also, H.D. and Pound were totally smooching.
Compare "Oread" to H.D.'s poem to Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." Do the language and imagery of these poems seem to work similarly to you? In what way?