Study On The Poetic Ideas Of American Imagism

The object of study is the poetic ideas of American imagism. American imagist poetry is formed in the early twentieth century. As a revolt against the late-Victorian romanticism, American imagists, led by Pound, put forward a new poetic method that emphasizes the truthful expression of authors’feeling about the modern world. This provides a solid base for the modern American poetry in the late twentieth century.Most American imagists adopt the free verse form in writing their poems. This form successfully breakes away with the traditional writing pattern and guarantees, to the greatest possible extent, the truthful display of authors’poetic emotion.In accordance with free verse form is the objectified language, which not only includes the authors’ subjective feeling, but also enables the poets to transform their thought into concrete things to present their aesthetic experience more effectively.Understatement, which is made possible by the use of objectified language in the imagist poetry, leads poets to fully tap the power of ordinary material in simple and forceful words, instead of exaggeration and flowery language.On this point, American imagists juxtapose the images in their writing in order to transfer the instant experience to the reader. Therefore, what one usually finds in an imagist poem is not linear statement, but a highly expressive cubic structure.In this way the importance of image is greatly highlighted. This enables the poets to express their rich feeling in a relatively limited space, while at the same time increasing the difficulty of reading and lengthening the time span of aesthetic experience for the reader. This is the defamiliarization effect in the imagist poetry.These principles in the writing of imagist poetry have a profound influence on the work of modern American poets in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the same time, a higher standard is demanded for the reader. As a result, few people could really appreciate the imagist poetry, which is indeed a regret for American imagism.