Instead of an
arbitrary
selection by an editor,
each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considers
his best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appeared
in book form.
each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considers
his best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appeared
in book form.
Imagists
D.
John Gould Fletcher
F. S. Flint
D. H. Lawrence
Amy Lowell
Release Date: October 17, 2009 [EBook #30276]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME IMAGIST POETS ***
Produced by Meredith Bach, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net. (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries. )
SOME IMAGIST POETS
SOME IMAGIST
POETS
AN ANTHOLOGY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published April 1915_
PREFACE
In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled "Des Imagistes. " It was a
collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a
school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new
movements in the arts, and has already become a household word.
Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the
contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them along
different paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume have
therefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we have
been joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the first
volume, our wider scope making this possible.
In this new book we have followed a slightly different arrangement to that
of the former Anthology.
Instead of an arbitrary selection by an editor,
each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considers
his best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appeared
in book form. A sort of informal committee--consisting of more than half
the authors here represented--have arranged the book and decided what
should be printed and what omitted, but, as a general rule, the poets
have been allowed absolute freedom in this direction, limitations of space
only being imposed upon them. Also, to avoid any appearance of precedence,
they have been put in alphabetical order.
As it has been suggested that much of the misunderstanding of the former
volume was due to the fact that we did not explain ourselves in a preface,
we have thought it wise to tell the public what our aims are, and why we
are banded together between one set of covers.
The poets in this volume do not represent a clique. Several of them are
personally unknown to the others, but they are united by certain common
principles, arrived at independently. These principles are not new; they
have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry,
indeed of all great literature, and they are simply these:--
1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the _exact_
word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms--as the expression of new moods--and not to copy
old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon
"free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for
a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may
often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In
poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.
3.
John Gould Fletcher
F. S. Flint
D. H. Lawrence
Amy Lowell
Release Date: October 17, 2009 [EBook #30276]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME IMAGIST POETS ***
Produced by Meredith Bach, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net. (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries. )
SOME IMAGIST POETS
SOME IMAGIST
POETS
AN ANTHOLOGY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published April 1915_
PREFACE
In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled "Des Imagistes. " It was a
collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a
school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new
movements in the arts, and has already become a household word.
Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the
contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them along
different paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume have
therefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we have
been joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the first
volume, our wider scope making this possible.
In this new book we have followed a slightly different arrangement to that
of the former Anthology.
Instead of an arbitrary selection by an editor,
each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considers
his best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appeared
in book form. A sort of informal committee--consisting of more than half
the authors here represented--have arranged the book and decided what
should be printed and what omitted, but, as a general rule, the poets
have been allowed absolute freedom in this direction, limitations of space
only being imposed upon them. Also, to avoid any appearance of precedence,
they have been put in alphabetical order.
As it has been suggested that much of the misunderstanding of the former
volume was due to the fact that we did not explain ourselves in a preface,
we have thought it wise to tell the public what our aims are, and why we
are banded together between one set of covers.
The poets in this volume do not represent a clique. Several of them are
personally unknown to the others, but they are united by certain common
principles, arrived at independently. These principles are not new; they
have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry,
indeed of all great literature, and they are simply these:--
1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the _exact_
word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms--as the expression of new moods--and not to copy
old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon
"free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for
a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may
often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In
poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.
3.
