Imagism in poetry

[milo]

The imagist movement directly preceded the modernist movement in poetry.  It was originally (so far as I remember) born as a rejection of the flowery verse and over written poetry with its strong metric and rhyme demands from the Romantic period.  

I think probably most of what I consider "good" in poetry stemmed from this movement as well as what I consider "bad" in poetry (I should state current poetry, obviously I am not going to try to retcon the last few hundred years0

That being said - I struggle to enjoy or connect with most poems labeled imagist or spawned from the Imagist movement.

What are your thought?  Enjoy imagist poems?  What is your favorite imagist poem?  Do you use techniques of imagism in your own writing or critique?

Thanks

[busker]

I enjoy them, but as I’ve written elsewhere, you can have too much of a good thing.
I had written a poem about it a while ago (apologies for plugging my pome in): https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-26404.html

But I would definitely like to write like a William Carlos Williams or an Ezra Poind. It may not be my cup of tea, but it’s a skill that should be learnt.

I wonder though, if poetry loses its spontaneity with too much learning. There is the craftsman and there is the creator. Ideally, you can be both, but perhaps being very good at one necessarily comes at the expense of the other. Like an LLM, you get too well trained on a narrow dataset

[milo]

I enjoy them, but as I’ve written elsewhere, you can have too much of a good thing.
I had written a poem about it a while ago (apologies for plugging my pome in): https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-26404.html

  IMO it makes sense to show what we mean using our own work, I have no problem with it at all and wouldn't mind even adding it inline and discussing it here.  It is interesting that the poem linked is not what I would consider imagism in any way but maybe a statement on imagism.

But I would definitely like to write like a William Carlos Williams or an Ezra Poind. It may not be my cup of tea, but it’s a skill that should be learnt.

I wonder though, if poetry loses its spontaneity with too much learning. There is the craftsman and there is the creator. Ideally, you can be both, but perhaps being very good at one necessarily comes at the expense of the other. Like an LLM, you get too well trained on a narrow dataset

This part here, I think about a lot, especially recently.  I think it may be a lot easier to write poetry if you cannot recognize good writing - like you can just dash it off and then dash more off.  Many times I start writing something and then think - this is trash - and can't find the words to say it in a way that isn't trash if that makes sense.

Thanks for commenting

[busker]

To your point. - the poem I linked was, indeed, not an imagist poem itself, but a statement on the genre
Perhaps it’d have been more interesting to  make the statement as an imagist poem, ironically. Leanne was good at doing clever things like that.

[milo]

To your point. - the poem I linked was, indeed, not an imagist poem itself, but a statement on the genre
Perhaps it’d have been more interesting to  make the statement as an imagist poem itself. Leanne was good at doing clever things like that

Yah, it seemed obvious, maybe not by my response.  The poem is pretty good for what it is, the rhymes are nice.  Images are fine.  I would have probably avoided the eagle

[milo]

I enjoy them, but as I’ve written elsewhere, you can have too much of a good thing.
I had written a poem about it a while ago (apologies for plugging my pome in): https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-26404.html

But I would definitely like to write like a William Carlos Williams or an Ezra Poind. It may not be my cup of tea, but it’s a skill that should be learnt.

I wonder though, if poetry loses its spontaneity with too much learning. There is the craftsman and there is the creator. Ideally, you can be both, but perhaps being very good at one necessarily comes at the expense of the other. Like an LLM, you get too well trained on a narrow dataset

It may be impossible to separate Ezra Pound from the personality that is Ezra Pound but WCW is exactly the type of poetry that I am talking about.  Everyone seems to love him, I just don't get him.  Here is the famous plum poem:

This Is Just To Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

For me, it is like empty calories.  It is like life savers for dinner when I want Beef Borbuignon.  I actually just looked up the analysis to it, that helps a little but I still get almost nothing from it.

One of the lines is "that were in"

[milo]

ok, nobody wants to defend the cold plums, mayb one oc WCW's most known, the red wheelbarrow:

The Red Wheelbarrow
By William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

One of the lines is "upon"!! Which honestly just wants to make me break into my rant about the difference between "on" and "upon". According to the analysis, it encourages readers to find meaning in ordinary things. Ok, Mr. Williams, a little help here?

[Quixilated]

I enjoy them, but as I’ve written elsewhere, you can have too much of a good thing.
I had written a poem about it a while ago (apologies for plugging my pome in): https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-26404.html

But I would definitely like to write like a William Carlos Williams or an Ezra Poind. It may not be my cup of tea, but it’s a skill that should be learnt.

I wonder though, if poetry loses its spontaneity with too much learning. There is the craftsman and there is the creator. Ideally, you can be both, but perhaps being very good at one necessarily comes at the expense of the other. Like an LLM, you get too well trained on a narrow dataset

It may be impossible to separate Ezra Pound from the personality that is Ezra Pound but WCW is exactly the type of poetry that I am talking about.  Everyone seems to love him, I just don't get him.  Here is the famous plum poem:

This Is Just To Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

For me, it is like empty calories.  It is like life savers for dinner when I want Beef Borbuignon.  I actually just looked up the analysis to it, that helps a little but I still get almost nothing from it.

One of the lines is "that were in"

"This Is Just to Say" is one of my all time favorite poems. I'm certain that I cannot convey my reasons in a way that will change your mind about the poem or the imagist movement. We all have favorite poems and styles of poems that are not someone else's cup of tea. My love for olives, no matter how thoroughly described, will not suddenly change the taste buds of someone who hates olives. 

One mistake I believe you are making in your critique is that you are looking at one single line at a time and asking whether or not each line is sufficiently poetic to be worthy of belonging to a famous poem. That is like looking at George Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon" and saying that you have examined it very closely and discovered, to your horror, that large segments of the painting consist only of green dots. Or like looking at Picasso's "Dance" and saying that it is barely more than a scribble compared to a Degas. Some artworks are meant to be experienced whole. 

Different art styles and movements shouldn't be compared by the standards of another because they have different goals. Rembrandt wanted his art to look realistic. Picasso very much did not. William Carlos Williams is not trying to accomplish the same purpose as Byron or Keats, so of course the poem will not use the same methods or have the same elements. "This Is Just to Say" will never compare to "The Eve of St. Agnes" if you look only line by line. The goal of one is brevity. The goal of the other is not. 

Ok, so here is what I see in the poem and why I like it. I do not expect to convince you. However, you seemed so baffled that I thought it might help to know why at least one person likes the poem. 

In only 28 words, an entire story is told. 
The poem is both a truth and a lie, an apology and a taunt, a love affair and a quarrel. 

The poem pretends to be an apology. It is not. The "probably" is a lie. The narrator clearly knows the plums were not to be eaten. They were absolutely meant to be saved for breakfast. He obviously knows this since he states as much in the not-apology note. He ate them anyway. They were likely meant to be shared. It wasn't "plum" singular. There were more than one. That one little 's' tells you everything you need to know about the narrator, it tells you what this note really is. It is filled with implications. He could have sneaked just one plum and still left the other for breakfast or for the other person to enjoy. Even if he is giving in to temptation, did he really have to eat ALL (or both, but more than one) the plums? But he did. The other person is the type of person who buys more than one plum--one assumes with the intention of sharing them. The other person is the type of person to carefully save the plums to be eaten (and probably shared) at a specific time and day. The narrator knows the other person is thinking, "oh how lovely breakfast will be when we eat these delicious plums together." And he still ate them anyway. 

That is already audacious enough. But! But, this wasn't just succumbing to temptation followed by penitence. If he were sorry, he would have said, "I couldn't help myself. I ate your plums. Please forgive me." But he doesn't say it was an accident. He doesn't say he didn't know they weren't to be eaten. He doesn't even actually say "I'm sorry" (because he's not). He asks for forgiveness, but doesn't actually apologize or express any kind of remorse. In fact, he takes it one step further and rubs it in. He describes how delicious the plums were, the plums he has eaten, that he didn't share, that the other person was looking forward to eating. He says (essentially), "Yes, I can see why you were looking forward to eating these for breakfast. They were fantastic, all of them (or both), just really the best plums ever. It's very unfortunate that you will not get to taste these unforgettably delicious plums that you bought and which I ate without asking, without sharing, and without remorse." 

This is the "apology" note the plum-saver sees when they go to retrieve the plums for breakfast. This person has chosen to share an icebox with the kind of person who thinks that writing a poem will absolve everything. But the poem is hilariously unapologetic. Did they laugh when they read the note? Did they chew him out first? Is this how he always apologizes for everything, and now they are wondering why they chose to live with a poet of all things? "I have taken your car as mine's out of gas. Forgive me. Yours has seat warmers. It's very nice." 

And, yet, this is the kind of relationship where he sees plums and knows why the other person bought them. Perhaps the other person knows he loves plums and bought them especially for him (I still think he could have shared, but that's between them). It's the kind of relationship where he knows he can get away with stealing the treasured plums. He knows he can leave a cheeky non-apology poem as payment for his sins. It's an easy, comfortable relationship where they are allowed to make mistakes and tease each other. 

Anyway, I love the poem because I think it is simultaneously hilarious, a bit evil, and yet weirdly romantic. And I love that an entire world is captured in just a small string of words. It's a snapshot of a moment. It creates an image. There may not be a lot of detail in the individual words and lines used, but the words are all chosen carefully and specifically to create a lot of detail in the image that the poem projects. The poem is the negative. The picture in your mind is the actual poem.

It has taken me almost 700 words to describe the same scene and feelings and relationship that WCW did in only 28 carefully-chosen words. 
Ok, rant over. Carry on. 

[milo]

I enjoy them, but as I’ve written elsewhere, you can have too much of a good thing.
I had written a poem about it a while ago (apologies for plugging my pome in): https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-26404.html

But I would definitely like to write like a William Carlos Williams or an Ezra Poind. It may not be my cup of tea, but it’s a skill that should be learnt.

I wonder though, if poetry loses its spontaneity with too much learning. There is the craftsman and there is the creator. Ideally, you can be both, but perhaps being very good at one necessarily comes at the expense of the other. Like an LLM, you get too well trained on a narrow dataset

It may be impossible to separate Ezra Pound from the personality that is Ezra Pound but WCW is exactly the type of poetry that I am talking about.  Everyone seems to love him, I just don't get him.  Here is the famous plum poem:

This Is Just To Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

For me, it is like empty calories.  It is like life savers for dinner when I want Beef Borbuignon.  I actually just looked up the analysis to it, that helps a little but I still get almost nothing from it.

One of the lines is "that were in"

"This Is Just to Say" is one of my all time favorite poems. I'm certain that I cannot convey my reasons in a way that will change your mind about the poem or the imagist movement. We all have favorite poems and styles of poems that are not someone else's cup of tea. My love for olives, no matter how thoroughly described, will not suddenly change the taste buds of someone who hates olives. 

One mistake I believe you are making in your critique is that you are looking at one single line at a time and asking whether or not each line is sufficiently poetic to be worthy of belonging to a famous poem. That is like looking at George Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon" and saying that you have examined it very closely and discovered, to your horror, that large segments of the painting consist only of green dots. Or like looking at Picasso's "Dance" and saying that it is barely more than a scribble compared to a Degas. Some artworks are meant to be experienced whole. 

Potentially, but in my mind, I need to get something from a line break or there is no reason for the break which is why I make fun of the lines.  They seem choppy to me. I just can't see the point of breaking where he does.  I do not enjoy them, you can say. That being said, I rarely enjoy short lines or even short poems for that matter.

Different art styles and movements shouldn't be compared by the standards of another because they have different goals. Rembrandt wanted his art to look realistic. Picasso very much did not. William Carlos Williams is not trying to accomplish the same purpose as Byron or Keats, so of course the poem will not use the same methods or have the same elements. "This Is Just to Say" will never compare to "The Eve of St. Agnes" if you look only line by line. The goal of one is brevity. The goal of the other is not. 

Ok, so here is what I see in the poem and why I like it. I do not expect to convince you. However, you seemed so baffled that I thought it might help to know why at least one person likes the poem. 

In only 28 words, an entire story is told. 
The poem is both a truth and a lie, an apology and a taunt, a love affair and a quarrel. 

The poem pretends to be an apology. It is not. The "probably" is a lie. The narrator clearly knows the plums were not to be eaten. They were absolutely meant to be saved for breakfast. He obviously knows this since he states as much in the not-apology note. He ate them anyway. They were likely meant to be shared. It wasn't "plum" singular. There were more than one. That one little 's' tells you everything you need to know about the narrator, it tells you what this note really is. It is filled with implications. He could have sneaked just one plum and still left the other for breakfast or for the other person to enjoy. Even if he is giving in to temptation, did he really have to eat ALL (or both, but more than one) the plums? But he did. The other person is the type of person who buys more than one plum--one assumes with the intention of sharing them. The other person is the type of person to carefully save the plums to be eaten (and probably shared) at a specific time and day. The narrator knows the other person is thinking, "oh how lovely breakfast will be when we eat these delicious plums together." And he still ate them anyway. 

That is already audacious enough. But! But, this wasn't just succumbing to temptation followed by penitence. If he were sorry, he would have said, "I couldn't help myself. I ate your plums. Please forgive me." But he doesn't say it was an accident. He doesn't say he didn't know they weren't to be eaten. He doesn't even actually say "I'm sorry" (because he's not). He asks for forgiveness, but doesn't actually apologize or express any kind of remorse. In fact, he takes it one step further and rubs it in. He describes how delicious the plums were, the plums he has eaten, that he didn't share, that the other person was looking forward to eating. He says (essentially), "Yes, I can see why you were looking forward to eating these for breakfast. They were fantastic, all of them (or both), just really the best plums ever. It's very unfortunate that you will not get to taste these unforgettably delicious plums that you bought and which I ate without asking, without sharing, and without remorse." 

This is the "apology" note the plum-saver sees when they go to retrieve the plums for breakfast. This person has chosen to share an icebox with the kind of person who thinks that writing a poem will absolve everything. But the poem is hilariously unapologetic. Did they laugh when they read the note? Did they chew him out first? Is this how he always apologizes for everything, and now they are wondering why they chose to live with a poet of all things? "I have taken your car as mine's out of gas. Forgive me. Yours has seat warmers. It's very nice." 

And, yet, this is the kind of relationship where he sees plums and knows why the other person bought them. Perhaps the other person knows he loves plums and bought them especially for him (I still think he could have shared, but that's between them). It's the kind of relationship where he knows he can get away with stealing the treasured plums. He knows he can leave a cheeky non-apology poem as payment for his sins. It's an easy, comfortable relationship where they are allowed to make mistakes and tease each other. 

Anyway, I love the poem because I think it is simultaneously hilarious, a bit evil, and yet weirdly romantic. And I love that an entire world is captured in just a small string of words. It's a snapshot of a moment. It creates an image. There may not be a lot of detail in the individual words and lines used, but the words are all chosen carefully and specifically to create a lot of detail in the image that the poem projects. The poem is the negative. The picture in your mind is the actual poem.

It has taken me almost 700 words to describe the same scene and feelings and relationship that WCW did in only 28 carefully-chosen words. 
Ok, rant over. Carry on. 

I think this is a great discussion of the poem.  Also, I think we could say you are objectively correct and I am wrong (believe me, it's been explained to me dozens of times) as the poem is super popular and held out one of the stand out demonstrations of what works in Imagism.

For me, alas, I don't thin it will ever work because I don't enjoy reading it.  It feels like a fart joke - funny once but then done.

I do, however enjoy discussing it and you have explained it excellently.

Thanks

[Quixilated]

Potentially, but in my mind, I need to get something from a line break or there is no reason for the break which is why I make fun of the lines.  They seem choppy to me. I just can't see the point of breaking where he does.  I do not enjoy them, you can say. That being said, I rarely enjoy short lines or even short poems for that matter.

I do agree with you about the line breaks. It is possible I would enjoy this poem just as much if the line breaks were in other places or even if there were none at all.  My only guess is that, as it is a taunt, stringing it out like that forces the "dawning realizations" to come more individually rather than all at once.  It gives the reader time to gasp in outrage multiple times rather than all at once. Also, it slows down the reading which makes the torment last that much longer for his victim. For those of us who have not lost the plums, the gradual dawning of realization would be less exquisite than it would be for the original subject. It is only if we step into their shoes and imagine reading this note in place of eating plums that stringing out the explanation begins to feel like adding insult to injury, especially when you get to "forgive me." Up until that point, the original reader might have still hoped for an apology. But after that, it becomes clear that fury might be the only appropriate response.

[milo]

Potentially, but in my mind, I need to get something from a line break or there is no reason for the break which is why I make fun of the lines.  They seem choppy to me. I just can't see the point of breaking where he does.  I do not enjoy them, you can say. That being said, I rarely enjoy short lines or even short poems for that matter.

I do agree with you about the line breaks. It is possible I would enjoy this poem just as much if the line breaks were in other places or even if there were none at all.  My only guess is that, as it is a taunt, stringing it out like that forces the "dawning realizations" to come more individually rather than all at once.  It gives the reader time to gasp in outrage multiple times rather than all at once. Also, it slows down the reading which makes the torment last that much longer for his victim. For those of us who have not lost the plums, the gradual dawning of realization would be less exquisite than it would be for the original subject. It is only if we step into their shoes and imagine reading this note in place of eating plums that stringing out the explanation begins to feel like adding insult to injury, especially when you get to "forgive me." Up until that point, the original reader might have still hoped for an apology. But after that, it becomes clear that fury might be the only appropriate response.

Maybe. I am skeptical only because he seems to use the same technique in every poem he writes. Is he always trying to froth me into a rage?

[Quixilated]

Maybe. I am skeptical only because he seems to use the same technique in every poem he writes. Is he always trying to froth me into a rage?

He is the type of person who will eat all of your special plums, leaving none behind, and then write a note to tell you how delicious they were and how not sorry he is.  

So, quite possibly, yes.

[milo]

Maybe. I am skeptical only because he seems to use the same technique in every poem he writes. Is he always trying to froth me into a rage?

He is the type of person who will eat all of your special plums, leaving none behind, and then write a note to tell you how delicious they were and how not sorry he is.  

So, quite possibly, yes.

My neighbor across the street was evicted in the fall and before she left she told me to dig up the plum trees she had planted and take them so this year I will have 2 plum trees

We will see if I get any plums