Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –

Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

Anthology of Poetry – Unit VI

The Imagist Movement:
Imagism was born in England and America in the early twentieth century. A reactionary
movement against Romanticism and Victorian poetry, imagism emphasized simplicity,
clarity of expression, and precision through the use of exacting visual images. Though
Ezra Pound is noted as the founder of imagism, the movement was rooted in ideas first
developed by English philosopher and poet T. E. Hulme, who, as early as 1908, spoke
of poetry based on an absolutely accurate presentation of its subject, with no excess
verbiage. In his essay “Romanticism and Classicism,” Hulme wrote that the language of
poetry is a “visual concrete one….Images in verse are not mere decoration, but the very
essence.” Pound adapted Hulme’s ideas on poetry for his imagist movement, which
began in earnest in 1912, when he first introduced the term into the literary lexicon
during a meeting with Hilda Doolittle. After reading her poem “Hermes of the Ways,”
Pound suggested some revisions and signed the poem “H. D., Imagiste” before sending
it to Poetry magazine in October of that year. That November, Pound himself used the
term “Imagiste” in print for the first time when he published Hulme’s Complete Poetical
Works.
A strand of modernism, imagism aimed to replace abstractions with concrete details that
could be further expounded upon through the use of figuration. These typically short,
free verse poems—which had clear precursors in the concise, image-focused poems of
ancient Greek lyricists and Japanese haiku poets—moved away from fixed meters and
moral reflections, subordinating everything to what Hulme once called the “hard, dry
image.”
Pound’s definition of the image was “that which presents an intellectual and emotional
complex in an instant of time.” He said, “It is the presentation of such a ‘complex’
instantaneously which gives the sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from
time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the
presence of the greatest works of art.” In March 1913, Poetry published “A Few Don’ts
by an Imagiste.” In it, imagist poet F. S. Flint, quoting Pound, defined the tenets of
imagist poetry:
I. Direct treatment of the “thing," whether subjective or objective.
II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in
sequence of the metronome.
In 1914, Des Imagistes (A. and C. Boni), an anthology assembled and edited by Pound,
was published; it collected work by William Carlos Williams, Richard Aldington, James
Joyce, and H. D., among others. By the spring of that year, however, disputes had
begun to brew among the movement regarding leadership and control of the group.
Amy Lowell, who criticized Pound for what she thought was a too-myopic view of poetry,

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

assumed leadership of the movement and from 1915 to 1917 published three
anthologies, all called Some Imagist Poets, but by then Pound had dissociated himself
from imagism, derisively calling it “Amygism”; Pound instead appropriated his imagism
into a new philosophy, vorticism, claiming that “the image is not an idea. It is a radiant
node or cluster; … a VORTEX.”
By 1917, even Lowell began to distance herself from the movement, the tenets of which
eventually became absorbed into the broader modernist movement and continued to
influence poets throughout the twentieth century.
Source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-imagism

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Suggested biography: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/william-carlos-williams

Poems
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Source: www.poetryfoundation.org

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Suggested biography: https://www.biography.com/people/ezra-pound-9445428

Poems
In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.
________________________________________

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle 1886-1961)

Suggested biography: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/h-d

Poems

Helen
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles

the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

Greece sees, unmoved,

God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.

______________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Suggested biography: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/elizabeth-bishop

Style
Where some of her notable contemporaries like Robert Lowell and John Berryman
made the intimate details of their personal lives an important part of their poetry, Bishop
avoided this practice altogether. In contrast to this confessional style involving large
amounts of self-exposure, Bishop's style of writing, though it sometimes involved sparse
details from her personal life, was known for its highly detailed, objective, and distant
point of view and for its reticence on the kinds of personal subject matter that the work
of her contemporaries involved. She used discretion when writing about details and
people from her own life. "In the Village", a piece about her childhood and mentally
unstable mother, is written as a third person narrative, and so the reader would only
know of the story's autobiographical origins by knowing about Bishop's childhood.
Bishop did not see herself as a "lesbian poet" or as a "female poet". Because she
refused to have her work published in all-female poetry anthologies, other female poets
involved with the women's movement thought she was hostile towards the movement.
Extremely vulnerable, sensitive, she hid much of her private life. She wanted nothing to
do with anything that seemed to involve the women's movement. She internalized many
of the male attitudes of the day toward women, who were supposed to be attractive,
appealing to men, and not ask for equal pay or a job with benefits." However, this was
not how Bishop necessarily viewed herself. In an interview with The Paris Review from
1978, she said that, despite her insistence on being excluded from female poetry
anthologies, she still considered herself to be "a strong feminist" but that she only
wanted to be judged based on the quality of her writing and not on her gender or sexual
orientation.
Source: Bishop, Elizabeth. "In the Village." Questions of Travel.

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

Poems
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

______________________________________________________________________

The Confessional Movement

Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or “I.” This style of writing emerged in
the late 1950s and early 1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell,
Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W. D. Snodgrass. Lowell’s book Life Studies was a
highly personal account of his life and familial ties and had a significant impact on
American poetry. Plath and Sexton were both students of Lowell and noted that his
work influenced their own writing. The confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century
dealt with subject matter that previously had not been openly discussed in
American poetry. Private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma,
depression and relationships were addressed in this type of poetry, often in an
autobiographical manner. Sexton in particular was interested in the psychological
aspect of poetry, having started writing at the suggestion of her therapist.

The confessional poets were not merely recording their emotions on paper; craft and
construction were extremely important to their work. While their treatment of the poetic
self may have been groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets
maintained a high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of
prosody. One of the most well-known poems by a confessional poet is "Daddy" by
Plath. Addressed to her father, the poem contains references to the Holocaust but uses
a sing-song rhythm that echoes the nursery rhymes of childhood:

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

The confessional poets of the 1950s and 1960s pioneered a type of writing that forever
changed the landscape of American poetry. The tradition of confessional poetry has
been a major influence on generations of writers and continues to this day.
Source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-confessional-poetry

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Suggested biography: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anne-sexton

Poems

Lament
Someone is dead.
Even the trees know it,
those poor old dancers who come on lewdly,
all pea-green scarfs and spine pole.
I think…
I think I could have stopped it,
if I'd been as firm as a nurse
or noticed the neck of the driver
as he cheated the crosstown lights;
or later in the evening,
if I'd held my napkin over my mouth.
I think I could…
if I'd been different, or wise, or calm,
I think I could have charmed the table,
the stained dish or the hand of the dealer.
But it's done.
It's all used up.
There's no doubt about the trees
spreading their thin feet into the dry grass.
A Canada goose rides up,
spread out like a gray suede shirt,
honking his nose into the March wind.
In the entryway a cat breathes calmly

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

into her watery blue fur.

The supper dishes are over and the sun
unaccustomed to anything else
goes on the way down.

Sylvia Plath
Suggested biography: https://www.biography.com/people/sylvia-plath-9442550

Poems
Morning Song
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

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Historia y Literatura Estadounidense –
Prof. Juan Pablo Duboué

Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.