Imagism

Question 1

T. E. Hulme, ‘Romanticism and Classicism’

Answer 1

advocates classical revival in poetry - ‘we are in for a classical revival’
romanticism - ‘man is a reservoir of possibilities’, about the infinite
classicism - man is a ‘fixed and limited animal’, about limitations
classical poetry aware of limitations, show everyday beauty in precise language
help people to see the familiar anew

Question 2

F.S. Flint, ‘Imagisme’

Answer 2

3 main arguments;
1, ‘Direct treatment of the “thing” ‘
2, precise language
3, musical rhythm

Question 3

Ezra Pound, ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’

Answer 3

image = ‘intellectual and emotional complex in a moment of time’
no superfluous words
need to know about musicality in depth
‘your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words’

Question 4

Pound, In a Station of the Metro

Answer 4

‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough’
less narrative, cinematic
excision of ‘like’
Liu Che - wet leaf clinging to a threshold

Question 5

T. E. Hulme, Autumn

Answer 5

septet
walking in the autumn air
‘saw the ruddy moon lean over the hedge/ Like a red-faced farmer.’
‘and round about were the wistful stars/ With white faces like town children’
simple simile

Question 6

T.E. Hulme ‘Above the Dock’

Answer 6

no connective, element of elusiveness but the same subject
‘tangled in the tall mast’s corded height/ Hangs the moon’
then like a child’s balloon
quatrain

Question 7

H.D., ‘The Contest’

Answer 7

contest between artist and creation
‘Your stature is modelled/ with straight tool-edge’
‘you are splendid your arms are fire’
‘Myrtle is about your head/ you have bent and caught the spray’
‘your shoulders are level- / they have melted rare silver/ for their breadth’
female artist and male creation
in three parts
timeless quality

Question 8

H.D. ‘Epigram’

Answer 8

'THE GOLDENone is gone from the banquets;
She, beloved of Atimetus,
The swallow, the bright Homonoea:
Gone the dear chatterer;
Death succeeds Atimetus.'
from 'On Claudia Homonoea', anonymous

Question 9

H.D. ‘Sea Rose’

Answer 9

rose tossed around in the ocean
four stanzas, irregular length, rhythm and rhyme
‘harsh rose’
‘you are caught in the drift’
links to John Cournos, ‘The Rose’ v prose like, also about a rose caught on the sea
4 stanzas, begins with two quatrains, then a five line stanza, then a tercet

Question 10

H.D. ‘The Walls Do Not Fall’

Answer 10

imagist epic, if there is such a thing
unity of fragments, eclecticism
palimpsest, looks her day in the face
in tercets
‘For Karnak 1923/ From London 1942’
part 1
‘and rails gone (for guns)/ From your (and my) old town square’
‘ruins everywhere’
‘Pompeii has nothing to teach us/ we know the crack of volcanic fissure,/ slow flow of terrible lava/ pressure on heart, lungs, the brain/ about to burst its brittle case/ (what the skull can endure)’
shifts to couplets
part 2
‘indelible ink of the palimpsest/ of past misadventure’
part 43
‘still the walls do not fall/ i do not know why’
‘we are voyagers, discoverers/ of the not-known’
in 43 parts

Question 11

Amy Lowell

Answer 11

Imagists knew that nothing was truly new.

Question 12

Cheryl Walker

Answer 12

Greek subject matter freed her from gender stereotypes, blends male and female (The Contest)

Question 13

Adalaide Morris

Answer 13

‘The Walls…’ both v firmly rooted in the war and transcends it