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The New Poetry Series

PUBLISHED BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY


IRRADIATIONS. SAND AND SPRAY. JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

SOME IMAGIST POETS.

JAPANESE LYRICS. Translated by LAFCADIO HEARN.

AFTERNOONS OF APRIL. GRACE HAZARD CONKLING.

THE CLOISTER: A VERSE DRAMA. EMILE VERHAEREN.

INTERFLOW. GEOFFREY C. FABER.

STILLWATER PASTORALS AND OTHER POEMS. PAUL SHIVELL.

IDOLS. WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG.

TURNS AND MOVIES, AND OTHER TALES IN VERSE. CONRAD AIKEN.

ROADS. GRACE FALLOW NORTON.

GOBLINS AND PAGODAS. JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

SOME IMAGIST POETS. _1916._

A SONG OF THE GUNS. GILBERT FRANKAU.

MOTHERS AND MEN. HAROLD T. PULSIFER.




SOME IMAGIST POETS, _1916_




  SOME IMAGIST POETS
  _1916_

  AN ANNUAL ANTHOLOGY


  [Illustration]

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  The Riverside Press Cambridge
  1916

  COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  _Published May 1916_

  THIRD IMPRESSION




PREFACE


In bringing the second volume of _Some Imagist Poets_ before the
public, the authors wish to express their gratitude for the interest
which the 1915 volume aroused. The discussion of it was widespread,
and even those critics out of sympathy with Imagist tenets accorded
it much space. In the Preface to that book, we endeavoured to present
those tenets in a succinct form. But the very brevity we employed has
lead to a great deal of misunderstanding. We have decided, therefore,
to explain the laws which govern us a little more fully. A few people
may understand, and the rest can merely misunderstand again, a result
to which we are quite accustomed.

In the first place "Imagism" does not mean merely the presentation of
pictures. "Imagism" refers to the manner of presentation, not to the
subject. It means a clear presentation of whatever the author wishes
to convey. Now he may wish to convey a mood of indecision, in which
case the poem should be indecisive; he may wish to bring before his
reader the constantly shifting and changing lights over a landscape,
or the varying attitudes of mind of a person under strong emotion,
then his poem must shift and change to present this clearly. The
"exact" word does not mean the word which exactly describes the
object in itself, it means the "exact" word which brings the effect
of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet's
mind at the time of writing the poem. Imagists deal but little with
similes, although much of their poetry is metaphorical. The reason
for this is that while acknowledging the figure to be an integral
part of all poetry, they feel that the constant imposing of one
figure upon another in the same poem blurs the central effect.

The great French critic, Remy de Gourmont, wrote last Summer in _La
France_ that the Imagists were the descendants of the French
_Symbolistes_. In the Preface to his _Livre des Masques_, M. de
Gourmont has thus described _Symbolisme_: "Individualism in
literature, liberty of art, abandonment of existing forms.... The
sole excuse which a man can have for writing is to write down
himself, to unveil for others the sort of world which mirrors itself
in his individual glass.... He should create his own aesthetics--and
we should admit as many aesthetics as there are original minds, and
judge them for what they are and not what they are not." In this
sense the Imagists are descendants of the _Symbolistes_; they are
Individualists.

The only reason that Imagism has seemed so anarchaic and strange to
English and American reviewers is that their minds do not easily and
quickly suggest the steps by which modern art has arrived at its
present position. Its immediate prototype cannot be found in English
or American literature, we must turn to Europe for it. With Debussy
and Stravinsky in music, and Gauguin and Matisse in painting, it
should have been evident to every one that art was entering upon an
era of change. But music and painting are universal languages, so we
have become accustomed to new