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101-487: Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has been termed "a succession of creative moments" rather than a continuous or sustained period of development. The French academic René Taupin remarked that "it is more accurate to consider Imagism not as
202-622: A synonym (a metonym ) for poetry. Poetry has a long and varied history , evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile , Niger , and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during
303-685: A 1928 letter to the French critic and translator René Taupin . He pointed out that Hulme was indebted to the Symbolist tradition, via W. B. Yeats , Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club generation of British poets and Mallarmé . Taupin concluded in his 1929 study that however great the divergence of technique and language "between the image of the Imagist and the 'symbol' of the Symbolists[,] there
404-597: A Century of Poets, Being Japanese Lyrical Odes , the first English-language version of the Hyakunin Isshū , a 13th-century anthology of 100 waka, the early 20th-century critical writings and poems of Sadakichi Hartmann , and contemporary French-language translations. The American poet Ezra Pound was introduced to the group in April 1909 and found their ideas close to his own. In particular, Pound's studies of early European vernacular poetry had led him to an admiration of
505-525: A Station of the Metro": The March 1913 issue of Poetry contained A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste and the essay entitled Imagisme both written by Pound, with the latter attributed to Flint. The latter contained this succinct statement of the group's position, which he had agreed with H.D. and Aldington: Pound's note opened with a definition of an image as "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time". Pound goes on to state,"It
606-400: A characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. The number of metrical feet in a line are described using Greek terminology: tetrameter for four feet and hexameter for six feet, for example. Thus, " iambic pentameter " is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the " iamb ". This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry , and
707-435: A common meter alone. Other poems may be organized into verse paragraphs , in which regular rhymes with established rhythms are not used, but the poetic tone is instead established by a collection of rhythms, alliterations, and rhymes established in paragraph form. Many medieval poems were written in verse paragraphs, even where regular rhymes and rhythms were used. In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking, so that
808-549: A critique of poetic tradition, testing the principle of euphony itself or altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. Poets – as, from the Greek , "makers" of language – have contributed to the evolution of the linguistic, expressive, and utilitarian qualities of their languages. In an increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles, and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. A Western cultural tradition (extending at least from Homer to Rilke ) associates
909-651: A deck composed of cards based on the Hyakunin Isshu . The most famous and standard version was compiled by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) while he lived in the Ogura district of Kyoto . It is therefore also known as Ogura Hyakunin Isshu ( 小倉百人一首 ) . One of Teika's diaries, the Meigetsuki , says that his son Tameie asked him to arrange one hundred poems for Tameie's father-in-law, Utsunomiya Yoritsuna , who
1010-577: A definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Matsuo Bashō 's Oku no Hosomichi , as well as differences in content spanning Tanakh religious poetry , love poetry, and rap . Until recently, the earliest examples of stressed poetry had been thought to be works composed by Romanos the Melodist ( fl. 6th century CE). However, Tim Whitmarsh writes that an inscribed Greek poem predated Romanos' stressed poetry. Classical thinkers in
1111-444: A diction he claimed was taken "from the mouths of Polish mothers". Both Pound and H.D. turned to long form poetry, but retained the hard edge to their language as an Imagist legacy. Most of the other members of the group are largely forgotten outside the context of Imagism. Despite the movement's short life, Imagism would deeply influence the course of modernist poetry in English . Richard Aldington, in his 1941 memoir, writes: "I think
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#17327761699191212-492: A doctrine, nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain time in agreement on a small number of important principles". The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romantic and Victorian poetry . In contrast to the contemporary Georgian poets , who were generally content to work within that tradition, Imagists called for a return to more Classical values, such as directness of presentation, economy of language, and
1313-727: A given foot or line and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter, tend to be highly irregular. Regularity can vary between language. In addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will generally reflect
1414-464: A heart, I would have you wait for one more royal visit! ( Shūi Wakashū 17:1128) A poem by Saigyō about the pain of love. This poem was chosen from the Senzai Wakashū : 嘆けとて月やは物を思はする かこち顔なるわが涙かな nageke to te tsuki ya wa mono wo omowasuru kakochi-gao naru waga namida ka na How could the moon make me fall into thought by saying "Lament!"? Although it
1515-401: A key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur. This can be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried through full stanzas. Alliteration is particularly useful in languages with less rich rhyming structures. Assonance, where
1616-416: A meaning separate from the repetitive sound patterns created. For example, Chaucer used heavy alliteration to mock Old English verse and to paint a character as archaic. Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at locations within lines (" internal rhyme "). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures; Italian, for example, has
1717-619: A number of poets, including William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , respectively. The most common metrical feet in English are: There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a choriamb , a four syllable metric foot with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables and closing with a stressed syllable. The choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry . Languages which use vowel length or intonation rather than or in addition to syllabic accents in determining meter, such as Ottoman Turkish or Vedic , often have concepts similar to
1818-456: A person of consequence riding an ox in a procession with attendants on foot. The group is passing through an area of maple leaves. Teika chose this poem from the Shūi Wakashū for the hundred poems collection: 小倉山峰のもみぢ葉心あらば 今ひとたびの行幸またなむ Ogura-yama mine no momijiba kokoro araba ima hitotabi no miyuki matanan Maple leaves on Ogura mountain: if you had
1919-498: A poem. For example, the strophe , antistrophe and epode of the ode form are often separated into one or more stanzas. Hyakunin Issh%C5%AB Hyakunin Isshu ( 百人一首 ) is a classical Japanese anthology of one hundred Japanese waka by one hundred poets. Hyakunin isshu can be translated to "one hundred people, one poem [each]"; it can also refer to the card game of uta-garuta , which uses
2020-420: A process known as lineation . These lines may be based on the number of metrical feet or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. Lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. Lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units, or can highlight a change in tone. See the article on line breaks for information about
2121-473: A regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the meter, which does not occur, or occurs to a much lesser extent, in English. Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who use them, include: Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element. They can also carry
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#17327761699192222-693: A resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses , in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are unique to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante , Goethe , Mickiewicz , or Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter . There are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry and alliterative verse , that use other means to create rhythm and euphony . Much modern poetry reflects
2323-430: A rich rhyming structure permitting maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in rhyme. The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that language. Alliteration
2424-414: A sentence without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful as a structural element. In many languages, including Arabic and modern European languages, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poetic forms, such as ballads , sonnets and rhyming couplets . However, the use of structural rhyme
2525-468: A series of more subtle, more flexible prosodic elements. Thus poetry remains, in all its styles, distinguished from prose by form; some regard for basic formal structures of poetry will be found in all varieties of free verse, however much such structures may appear to have been ignored. Similarly, in the best poetry written in classic styles there will be departures from strict form for emphasis or effect. Among major structural elements used in poetry are
2626-539: A willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms; Imagists used free verse . A characteristic feature of the form is its attempt to isolate a single image to reveal its essence. This mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism . Although these poets isolate objects through the use of what the American poet Ezra Pound called "luminous details", Pound's ideogrammic method of juxtaposing concrete instances to express an abstraction
2727-525: Is a difference only of precision". In 1915, Pound edited the poetry of another 1890s poet, Lionel Johnson . In his introduction, he wrote No one has written purer imagism than [Johnson] has, in the line Clear lie the fields, and fade into blue air, It has a beauty like the Chinese. In 1911, Pound introduced two other poets to the Eiffel Tower group: his former fiancée Hilda Doolittle, who by then
2828-404: Is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought-process. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic " negative capability ". This "romantic" approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into
2929-575: Is attributed to me being in love, I attribute my tears falling down to the moon. ( Senzai Wakashū 15:926) The Ogura Hyakunin Isshu has been translated into many languages and into English many times. English translations include: Many other anthologies compiled along the same criteria—one hundred poems by one hundred poets—include the words hyakunin isshu , notably the World War II -era Aikoku Hyakunin Isshu ( 愛国百人一首 ) , or One Hundred Patriotic Poems by One Hundred Poets . Also important
3030-444: Is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works". His list of "don'ts" reinforced his three statements in "Imagism", while warning that they should not be considered as dogma but as the "result of long contemplation". Taken together, these two texts comprised the Imagist programme for a return to what they saw as the best poetic practice of the past. F. S. Flint commented "we have never claimed to have invented
3131-457: Is called a poem and is written by a poet . Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance , alliteration , euphony and cacophony , onomatopoeia , rhythm (via metre ), and sound symbolism , to produce musical or other artistic effects. Most written poems are formatted in verse : a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate structure. For this reason, verse has also become
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3232-593: Is considered to be one of the official Confucian classics . His remarks on the subject have become an invaluable source in ancient music theory . The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in " poetics "—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as China's through the Shijing , developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance. More recently, thinkers have struggled to find
3333-451: Is most often founded on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (alone or elided ). In the classical languages , on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter. Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line. The chief device of ancient Hebrew Biblical poetry , including many of
3434-645: Is not universal even within the European tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes . Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages , due to the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus . Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively not only with the development of literary Arabic in the sixth century , but also with
3535-529: Is perceived. Languages can rely on either pitch or tone. Some languages with a pitch accent are Vedic Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. Tonal languages include Chinese, Vietnamese and most Subsaharan languages . Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern English verse the pattern of stresses primarily differentiate feet, so rhythm based on meter in Modern English
3636-511: Is similar to Cubism's manner of synthesizing multiple perspectives into a single image. Imagist publications appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured works by many of the most prominent modernist figures in poetry and other fields, including Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Amy Lowell , Ford Madox Ford , William Carlos Williams , F. S. Flint , and T. E. Hulme . The Imagists were centered in London, with members from Great Britain, Ireland and
3737-409: Is the repetition of letters or letter-sounds at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in accented parts of words. Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as
3838-407: Is the speaker, not the poet, who is the killer (unless this "confession" is a form of metaphor which needs to be considered in closer context – via close reading ). Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy , and developed from folk epics and other oral genres. Others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving epic poem,
3939-587: The Epic of Gilgamesh , dates from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer (in Mesopotamia , present-day Iraq ), and was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, on papyrus . The Istanbul tablet#2461 , dating to c. 2000 BCE, describes an annual rite in which the king symbolically married and mated with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility and prosperity; some have labelled it
4040-703: The Tamil language , had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar ) which ensured a rhythm. Classical Chinese poetics , based on the tone system of Middle Chinese , recognized two kinds of tones: the level (平 píng ) tone and the oblique (仄 zè ) tones, a category consisting of the rising (上 sháng ) tone, the departing (去 qù ) tone and the entering (入 rù ) tone. Certain forms of poetry placed constraints on which syllables were required to be level and which oblique. The formal patterns of meter used in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In
4141-553: The Vorticists with his friend, the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis . Around this time, the American Imagist Amy Lowell moved to London, determined to promote her own work and that of the other Imagist poets. Lowell was a wealthy heiress from Boston , whose brother Abbott Lawrence Lowell was President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933. She was an enthusiastic champion of literary experiment who
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4242-591: The West employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle 's Poetics describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, and the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the perceived underlying purposes of the genre. Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry , and dramatic poetry , treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry. Aristotle's work
4343-519: The psalms , was parallelism , a rhetorical structure in which successive lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure, notional content, or all three. Parallelism lent itself to antiphonal or call-and-response performance, which could also be reinforced by intonation . Thus, Biblical poetry relies much less on metrical feet to create rhythm, but instead creates rhythm based on much larger sound units of lines, phrases and sentences. Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of
4444-608: The scanning of poetic lines to show meter. The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having timing set primarily by accents , syllables , or moras , depending on how rhythm is established, although a language can be influenced by multiple approaches. Japanese is a mora -timed language. Latin , Catalan , French , Leonese , Galician and Spanish are called syllable-timed languages. Stress-timed languages include English , Russian and, generally, German . Varying intonation also affects how rhythm
4545-437: The "a-bc" convention, such as the ottava rima and terza rima . The types and use of differing rhyming schemes are discussed further in the main article . Poetic form is more flexible in modernist and post-modernist poetry and continues to be less structured than in previous literary eras. Many modern poets eschew recognizable structures or forms and write in free verse . Free verse is, however, not "formless" but composed of
4646-399: The 1930s under the auspices of Pound and Williams. The Objectivists worked mainly in free verse. Clearly linking Objectivism's principles with Imagism's, Louis Zukofsky insisted, in his introduction to the 1931 Objectivist issue of Poetry , on writing "which is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody." Zukofsky
4747-519: The 20th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, there was also substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in part due to the spread of European colonialism and the attendant rise in global trade. In addition to a boom in translation , during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered. Some 20th-century literary theorists rely less on the ostensible opposition of prose and poetry, instead focusing on
4848-850: The 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poem , the Epic of Gilgamesh , was written in the Sumerian language . Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing as well as from religious hymns (the Sanskrit Rigveda , the Zoroastrian Gathas , the Hurrian songs , and the Hebrew Psalms ); or from a need to retell oral epics, as with
4949-638: The Egyptian Story of Sinuhe , Indian epic poetry , and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey . Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle 's Poetics , focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric , drama , song , and comedy . Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition , verse form , and rhyme , and emphasized aesthetics which distinguish poetry from
5050-577: The Imagist emphasis on Chinese and Japanese poetry. Williams also had a strong effect on the Beat poets, encouraging poets like Lew Welch and writing an introduction for the book publication of Ginsberg's Howl (1955). Poetry Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis , "making") is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry
5151-597: The Indian Sanskrit -language Rigveda , the Avestan Gathas , the Hurrian songs , and the Hebrew Psalms , possibly developed directly from folk songs . The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry , the Classic of Poetry ( Shijing ), were initially lyrics . The Shijing, with its collection of poems and folk songs, was heavily valued by the philosopher Confucius and
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#17327761699195252-516: The Poets' Club and started meeting with Flint and other poets in a new group which Hulme referred to as the "Secession Club"; they met at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in London's Soho to discuss plans to reform contemporary poetry through free verse and the tanka and haiku and through the removal of all unnecessary verbiage from poems. The interest in Japanese verse forms can be contextualized by
5353-578: The United States. Somewhat unusually for the time, a number of women writers were major Imagist figures. The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, Autumn and A City Sunset by T. E. Hulme . These were published in January 1909 by the Poets' Club in London in a booklet called For Christmas MDCCCCVIII . Hulme was a student of mathematics and philosophy; he had been involved in setting up
5454-714: The Window and in Lawrence's animal and flower pieces. The rejection of conventional verse forms in the nineteen-twenties owed much to the Imagists' repudiation of the Georgian Poetry style. Imagism, which had made free verse a discipline and a legitimate poetic form, influenced a number of poetry circles and movements. Its influence can be seen clearly in the work of the Objectivist poets , who came to prominence in
5555-504: The case of free verse , rhythm is often organized based on looser units of cadence rather than a regular meter. Robinson Jeffers , Marianne Moore , and William Carlos Williams are three notable poets who reject the idea that regular accentual meter is critical to English poetry. Jeffers experimented with sprung rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm. In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to
5656-432: The club in 1908 and was its first secretary. Around the end of 1908, he presented his paper A Lecture on Modern Poetry at one of the club's meetings. Writing in A. R. Orage 's magazine The New Age , the poet and critic F. S. Flint (a champion of free verse and modern French poetry) was highly critical of the club and its publications. From the ensuing debate, Hulme and Flint became close friends. In 1909, Hulme left
5757-608: The complex cultural web within which a poem is read. Today, throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at definition and classification that once made sense within a tradition such as the Western canon . The early 21st-century poetic tradition appears to continue to strongly orient itself to earlier precursor poetic traditions such as those initiated by Whitman , Emerson , and Wordsworth . The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman (1929–2016) used
5858-513: The condensed, direct expression that he detected in the writings of Arnaut Daniel , Dante , and Guido Cavalcanti , amongst others. For example, in his 1911–12 series of essays I gather the limbs of Osiris , Pound writes of Daniel's line "pensar de lieis m'es repaus" ("it rests me to think of her"), from the canzone En breu brizara'l temps braus : "You cannot get statement simpler than that, or clearer, or less rhetorical". These criteria—directness, clarity and lack of rhetoric —were to be amongst
5959-631: The defining qualities of Imagist poetry. Through his friendship with Laurence Binyon , Pound had already developed an interest in Japanese art by examining Nishiki-e prints at the British Museum, and he quickly became absorbed in the study of Japanese verse forms. In a 1915 article in La France , French critic Remy de Gourmont described the Imagists as descendants of the French Symbolists . Pound emphasised that influence in
6060-420: The degree of sympathy that the writers displayed with Imagist precepts, rather than active participation in a group. Williams, based in the United States, had not participated in any of the discussions of the Eiffel Tower group. However, he and Pound had long been corresponding on the question of the renewal of poetry along similar lines. Ford was included at least partly because of his strong influence on Pound, as
6161-444: The division between lines. Lines of poems are often organized into stanzas , which are denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet (or distich ), three lines a triplet (or tercet ), four lines a quatrain , and so on. These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may be two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by
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#17327761699196262-570: The first appearances of the word "Imagiste" (later anglicised to "Imagist") in print. Aldington's poems, Choricos , To a Greek Marble , and Au Vieux Jardin , were in the November issue of Poetry , and H.D.'s, Hermes of the Ways , Priapus , and Epigram , appeared in the January 1913 issue, marking the beginning of the Imagism movement. Poetry ' s April issue published Pound's haiku-like "In
6363-506: The first half of the 20th century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of distinctions between poetry and prose, particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic poetry. Numerous modernist poets have written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused with poetic diction and often with rhythm and tone established by non-metrical means. While there
6464-501: The first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line do not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an AA BA rhyme scheme . This rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat form. Similarly, an A BB A quatrain (what is known as " enclosed rhyme ") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet . Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have developed names of their own, separate from
6565-457: The format of more objectively-informative, academic, or typical writing, which is known as prose . Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses. The use of ambiguity , symbolism , irony , and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, figures of speech such as metaphor , simile , and metonymy establish
6666-431: The goals of the group, causing the two to cease contact with each other. Flint emphasised the contribution of the Eiffel Tower poets, especially Edward Storer . Pound, who believed that the "Hellenic hardness" that he saw as the distinguishing quality of the poems of H.D. and Aldington was likely to be diluted by the "custard" of Storer, was to play no further direct role in the history of the Imagists. He went on to co-found
6767-640: The gods. ( Shin Kokin Wakashū 3:175) The original was likely based from a poem of the Man'yōshū (book 1, poem 28) by the same poet. A quite different poem is attributed to Sadaijin Fujiwara no Tadahira in the context of a very specific incident. After abdicating, former Emperor Uda visited Mount Ogura in Yamashiro Province . He was so greatly impressed by the beauty of autumn colours of
6868-422: The group during this period. With World War I as a backdrop, the times were not easy for avant-garde literary movements (Aldington, for example, spent much of the war at the front), and the 1917 anthology effectively marked the end of the Imagists as a movement. In 1929, Walter Lowenfels jokingly suggested that Aldington should produce a new Imagist anthology. Aldington, by now a successful novelist, took up
6969-414: The iamb and dactyl to describe common combinations of long and short sounds. Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle but stable verse. Scanning meter can often show the basic or fundamental pattern underlying a verse, but does not show
7070-418: The language. Actual rhythm is significantly more complex than the basic scanned meter described above, and many scholars have sought to develop systems that would scan such complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted that overlaid on top of the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse was a separate pattern of accents resulting from the natural pitch of the spoken words, and suggested that
7171-474: The late Victorian and Edwardian revival of Chinoiserie and Japonism as witnessed in the 1890s vogue for William Anderson 's Japanese prints donated to the British Museum as well as in the influence of woodblock prints on paintings by Monet , Degas and van Gogh . Direct literary models were available from a number of sources, including F. V. Dickins 's 1866 Hyak nin is'shiu, or, Stanzas by
7272-403: The line, the stanza or verse paragraph , and larger combinations of stanzas or lines such as cantos . Also sometimes used are broader visual presentations of words and calligraphy . These basic units of poetic form are often combined into larger structures, called poetic forms or poetic modes (see the following section), as in the sonnet . Poetry is often separated into lines on a page, in
7373-523: The major American verse of the twenty-first century, may yet be seen as what Stevens called 'a great shadow's last embellishment,' the shadow being Emerson's." In the 2020s, advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models , enabled the generation of poetry in specific styles and formats. A 2024 study found that AI-generated poems were rated by non-expert readers as more rhythmic, beautiful, and human-like than those written by well-known human authors. This preference may stem from
7474-571: The maples that he ordered Fujiwara no Tadahira to encourage Uda's son and heir, Emperor Daigo , to visit the same area. Prince Tenshin or Teishin ( 貞信公 , Teishin-kō ) was Tadahira's posthumous name, and this is the name used in William Porter's translation of the poem which observes that "[t]he maples of Mount Ogura / If they could understand / Would keep their brilliant leaves / until [t]he Ruler of this land / Pass with his Royal band." The accompanying 18th century illustration shows
7575-406: The moon. We do not pretend that our ideas are original." The 1916 preface to Some Imagist Poets comments " Imagism does not merely mean the presentation of pictures. Imagism refers to the manner of presentation, not to the subject." Determined to promote the work of the Imagists, and particularly of Aldington and H.D., Pound decided to publish an anthology under the title Des Imagistes . It
7676-507: The much older oral poetry, as in their long, rhyming qasidas . Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat , while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes. Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if
7777-508: The original poets, plus the American John Gould Fletcher , but not Pound, who had tried to persuade Lowell to drop the Imagist name from her publications and who sardonically dubbed this phase of Imagism "Amygism". Lowell persuaded D. H. Lawrence to contribute poems to the 1915 and 1916 volumes, making him the only writer to publish as both a Georgian poet and an Imagist. Marianne Moore also became associated with
7878-564: The phrase "the anxiety of demand" to describe the contemporary response to older poetic traditions as "being fearful that the fact no longer has a form", building on a trope introduced by Emerson. Emerson had maintained that in the debate concerning poetic structure where either "form" or "fact" could predominate, that one need simply "Ask the fact for the form." This has been challenged at various levels by other literary scholars such as Harold Bloom (1930–2019), who has stated: "The generation of poets who stand together now, mature and ready to write
7979-656: The poems of Ezra Pound, H.D., Lawrence, and Ford Madox Ford will continue to be read. And to a considerable extent T. S. Eliot and his followers have carried on their operations from positions won by the Imagists." On the other hand, the American poet Wallace Stevens found shortcomings in the Imagist approach: "Not all objects are equal. The vice of imagism was that it did not recognize this." With its demand for hardness, clarity and precision and its insistence on fidelity to appearances coupled with its rejection of irrelevant subjective emotions Imagism had later effects that are demonstratable in T. S. Eliot 's Preludes and Morning at
8080-443: The poet as simply one who creates using language, and poetry as what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon, and some modernist poets essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with words, and creative acts in other media. Other modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided. The rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in
8181-423: The poets who were published in the various Imagist anthologies, Joyce, Lawrence and Aldington are now primarily remembered and read as novelists. Marianne Moore, who was at most a fringe member of the group, carved out a unique poetic style of her own that retained an Imagist concern with compression of language. William Carlos Williams developed his poetic along distinctly American lines with his variable foot and
8282-461: The production of poetry with inspiration – often by a Muse (either classical or contemporary), or through other (often canonised) poets' work which sets some kind of example or challenge. In first-person poems, the lyrics are spoken by an "I", a character who may be termed the speaker , distinct from the poet (the author ). Thus if, for example, a poem asserts, "I killed my enemy in Reno", it
8383-463: The relative simplicity and accessibility of AI-generated poetry, which some participants found easier to understand. Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm , and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter are different, although closely related. Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter ), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to
8484-420: The rhyming scheme or other structural elements of one stanza determine those of succeeding stanzas. Examples of such interlocking stanzas include, for example, the ghazal and the villanelle , where a refrain (or, in the case of the villanelle, refrains) is established in the first stanza which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. Related to the use of interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic parts of
8585-594: The signature H.D. Imagiste to some poems they were discussing. When Harriet Monroe started her Poetry magazine in 1911, she had asked Pound to act as foreign editor. In October 1912, he submitted thereto three poems each by H.D. and Aldington under the Imagiste rubric, with a note describing Aldington as "one of the 'Imagistes'". This note, along with the appendix note ("The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme") in Pound's book Ripostes (1912), are considered to be
8686-489: The suggestion and enlisted the help of Ford and H.D. The result was the Imagist Anthology 1930 , edited by Aldington and including all the contributors to the four earlier anthologies with the exception of Lowell, who had died, Cannell, who had disappeared, and Pound, who declined. The appearance of this anthology initiated a critical discussion of the place of the Imagists in the history of 20th-century poetry. Of
8787-522: The temporary dwelling made of rushes, my sleeves are wet with the dew. ( Gosen Wakashū 6:302) A visually-descriptive poem attributed to Empress Jitō . Teika chose this poem from the Shin Kokin Wakashū : 春過ぎて夏来にけらし 白妙の 衣干すてふ天の香具山 haru sugite natsu kinikerashi shirotae no koromo hosu chō Ama no Kaguyama Spring has passed, and the white robes of summer are being aired on fragrant Mount Kagu—beloved of
8888-534: The term "scud" be used to distinguish an unaccented stress from an accented stress. Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearean iambic pentameter and the Homeric dactylic hexameter to the anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are common, both to provide emphasis or attention to
8989-421: The use of similar vowel sounds within a word rather than similar sounds at the beginning or end of a word, was widely used in skaldic poetry but goes back to the Homeric epic. Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry. Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout
9090-437: The varying degrees of stress , as well as the differing pitches and lengths of syllables. There is debate over how useful a multiplicity of different "feet" is in describing meter. For example, Robert Pinsky has argued that while dactyls are important in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses dactyls very irregularly and can be better described based on patterns of iambs and anapests, feet which he considers natural to
9191-979: The world's oldest love poem. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe (c. 1800 BCE). Other ancient epics includes the Greek Iliad and the Odyssey ; the Persian Avestan books (the Yasna ); the Roman national epic , Virgil 's Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BCE); and the Indian epics , the Ramayana and the Mahabharata . Epic poetry appears to have been composed in poetic form as an aid to memorization and oral transmission in ancient societies. Other forms of poetry, including such ancient collections of religious hymns as
9292-507: The younger poet made the transition from his earlier, Pre-Raphaelite -influenced style towards a harder, more modern way of writing. The anthology included the poem I Hear an Army by James Joyce, which was sent to Pound by W. B. Yeats. An article on the history of Imagism was written by Flint and published in The Egoist in May 1915. Pound disagreed with Flint's interpretation of events and
9393-630: Was a major influence on the Language poets , who carried the Imagist focus on formal concerns to a high level of development. In his seminal 1950 essay Projective Verse , Charles Olson , the theorist of the Black Mountain poets , wrote "One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception", his credo derived from and supplemented the Imagists. Among the Beats , Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg in particular were influenced by
9494-402: Was a substantial formalist reaction within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures. Postmodernism goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text ( hermeneutics ), and to highlight
9595-575: Was better known for other work. For example, in 1200 ( Shōji 2), he prepared another anthology of one hundred poems for ex- Emperor Go-Toba , called the Shōji Hyakushu . A poem by Emperor Tenji about the hardships of farmers. Teika chose this poem from the Gosen Wakashū : 秋の田のかりほの庵の苫をあらみ わが衣手は露にぬれつつ aki no ta no kariho no io no toma o arami waga koromode wa tsuyu ni nuretsutsu In autumn paddies under
9696-814: Was first published in Alfred Kreymborg 's little magazine The Glebe and was later published in 1914 by Albert and Charles Boni in New York and by Harold Monro at the Poetry Bookshop in London. It became one of the most important and influential English-language collections of modernist verse. Included in the thirty-seven poems were ten poems by Aldington, seven by H.D., and six by Pound. The book also included work by Flint, Skipwith Cannell , Amy Lowell , William Carlos Williams , James Joyce , Ford Madox Ford , Allen Upward and John Cournos . Pound's editorial choices were based on what he saw as
9797-440: Was furnishing a residence near Mount Ogura ; hence the full name of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu . In order to decorate screens of the residence, Fujiwara no Teika produced the calligraphy poem sheets. Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694) provided woodblock portraits for each of the poets included in the anthology. Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1793) designed prints for a full-color edition published in 1775. In his own lifetime, Teika
9898-677: Was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age , as well as in Europe during the Renaissance . Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to prose , which they generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure. This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry
9999-416: Was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho , and by the great tragedians of Athens . Similarly, " dactylic hexameter ", comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the " dactyl ". Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry , the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod . Iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter were later used by
10100-466: Was willing to use her money to publish the group. Lowell was determined to change the method of selection from Pound's autocratic editorial attitude to a more democratic manner. The outcome was a series of Imagist anthologies under the title Some Imagist Poets . The first of these appeared in 1915, planned and assembled mainly by H.D. and Aldington. Two further issues, both edited by Lowell, were published in 1916 and 1917. These three volumes featured most of
10201-594: Was writing under her initials, H.D. , and H.D.'s future husband Richard Aldington . These two were interested in exploring Greek poetic models, especially Sappho , an interest that Pound shared. The compression of expression that they achieved by following the Greek example complemented the proto-Imagist interest in Japanese poetry, and, in 1912, during a meeting with them in the British Museum tea room, Pound told H.D. and Aldington that they were Imagistes and even appended
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