imagism
Sharp-focus poetry
Imagism was an early twentieth-century poetry movement emphasizing precise imagery, clear language, and concentrated expression.
Imagist poets rejected Victorian ornamentation for direct treatment of subjects, often in free verse: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound and H.D. were leading figures.
The term now describes any poetry favoring sharp, economical images over abstraction.
- VorticismBritish geometric modernist movement
- modernismFavoring contemporary approaches
- free versePoetry without fixed structure
- avant-gardeInnovative cultural pioneers
Vivid descriptive language
- precisionAccuracy of measurement
- clarityState of being understandable
- directnessQuality of being straightforward
- concisionVerbal economy, pared down
economy · juxtaposition · cadence · free verse · concrete · sensory · visual · exactitude
Intensely clear and bright
- luminousEmitting or reflecting light
- crystallineClear, ordered, brilliant
- sculpturalRelating to carved forms
- chiseledSharply cut, well-defined
stark · spare · austere · lapidary · sharp · clean · bright · hard
Undiffused, shadow-creating illumination
- instantaneousHappening without any delay
- vortexRotating fluid column
Ezra Pound
- VorticismBritish geometric modernist movement
- modernismFavoring contemporary approaches
- free versePoetry without fixed structure
imagery
Vivid descriptive language
- precisionAccuracy of measurement
- clarityState of being understandable
- directnessQuality of being straightforward
concision · economy · juxtaposition · cadence · free verse · concrete · sensory · visual · exactitude · objectivity
vivid
Intensely clear and bright
- luminousEmitting or reflecting light
- crystallineClear, ordered, brilliant
- sculpturalRelating to carved forms
chiseled · stark · spare · austere · lapidary · sharp · clean · bright · hard · dry
hard light
Undiffused, shadow-creating illumination
- instantaneousHappening without any delay
- vortexRotating fluid column
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
- poetry termspoetry, rhyme, verse, rhythm, meter
- literary genresfiction, poetry collections, realism, family drama, classic novels
- modernismPicasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Braque, Kandinsky
- modernist literatureJoyce, Woolf, James Joyce, Kafka, Hemingway
- poeticsrhyme, versification, poetic form, stanza, meter
imagismabstraction
Distilling to essential qualities
discursiveness · didacticism · vagueness · verbosity · Victorian poetry
imagismromanticism
Emotional, imaginative worldview
Victorian poetry · sentimentality · symbolism · diffuseness · obscurantism
imagismsymbolism
Representing concepts through images
Aestheticism · Romanticism · Victorianism · confessional poetry · beat poetry
- thermal imagingDetecting objects by warmth
- magnetic resonance imagingScan using powerful magnets
- medical imagingCreating pictures inside bodies
- brain imagingVisualizing cerebral structures or activity
- document imagingDigitizing paper records
- satellite imagingPhotography from orbiting spacecraft