Des Imagistes

Des Imagistes
Name	Des Imagistes
Caption	First edition cover
Editor	Amy Lowell
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Poetry anthology
Publisher	Poetry Bookshop
Pub date	1914
Media type	Print

Des Imagistes

Des Imagistes was a 1914 anthology of modernist poetry that crystallized the Imagist movement in London and New York. Edited and promoted amid debates between contemporary poets and critics, it brought together poems that engaged with aesthetic debates represented by figures and institutions across United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, and Ireland. The volume connected networks spanning Poetry (magazine), Poetry Bookshop, The Egoist, The Little Review, and salons frequented by writers from Oxford University to Columbia University.

Background and Origins

The anthology emerged from disputes among poets associated with Ezra Pound, T. E. Hulme, F. S. Flint, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and associates around journals such as Poetry (magazine), The Egoist, Blast, The Little Review and groups threaded through London and New York. Early meetings and manifestos involved exchanges with editors and patrons including Ezra Pound's correspondence with William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Marianne Moore, Sherwood Anderson, and contacts at The Dial and The Athenaeum. The anthology was conceived amid rivalries with proponents of Imagism as debated against proponents linked to Vorticism, Symbolism, and advocates from Harvard University and Boston salons.

Publication and Contents

Published in 1914 by the Poetry Bookshop in London and distributed to readers in New York and Paris, the book presented a compact sequence of poems with a prefatory note by its editor. The volume’s pages juxtaposed short lyrics, translations, and experimental pieces by authors who had been printed in Poetry (magazine), The Egoist, Blast, Others, The Little Review and small presses connected to Harriet Monroe, Vernon Lee, and publishers active in Bloomsbury Group circles. Contents included original poems alongside translations influenced by source languages associated with Greece, Japan, China, and medieval traditions studied at Cambridge University.

Contributors and Key Works

Contributors included established and emergent figures such as Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Richard Aldington, F. S. Flint, William Carlos Williams, Ford Madox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound's circle, and poets with links to Harold Monro's Poetry Bookshop. Key works in the anthology involved poems that later appeared in collections by Amy Lowell and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), alongside pieces republished by editors at Poetry (magazine), The Egoist, The Little Review and anthologized in retrospective compilations with contributors such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and John Gould Fletcher.

Critical Reception and Influence

Contemporary reception ranged from enthusiastic support in reviews by editors and critics at Poetry (magazine), The Egoist, The Little Review and literary columns in newspapers tied to editors like Harriet Monroe to sharp critique from proponents of Georgian Poetry, defenders of traditional metrics such as critics aligned with Edward Marsh and responses from periodicals affiliated with Punch (magazine). Debates over Imagist principles engaged figures including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, F. S. Flint, Richard Aldington, and led to polemics in forums spanning London and New York. The anthology influenced later modernist developments associated with modernist practice in circles around F. S. Flint, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and institutional reception at Harvard University, Princeton University, and Oxford University.

Themes and Style

Poems collected emphasized clarity, precision, economy, and the use of free verse in forms influenced by translations of Classical Greek literature, Japanese tanka, Chinese poetry, and medieval sources studied at Cambridge University and Oxford University. Stylistic features foregrounded imagistic juxtaposition, concrete detail, and metrical experimentation that intersected with debates involving Vorticism, Symbolism, and advocates for vernacular practice such as William Carlos Williams and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). The anthology’s techniques resonated with later aesthetic programs discussed in essays and lectures by figures at Columbia University, New York University, and salons linked to Bloomsbury Group members like Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey.

Legacy and Later Editions

The original 1914 edition sparked reprints, critical studies, and retrospective anthologies published by presses and journals including Poetry (magazine), Faber and Faber, The Egoist, and university presses at Harvard University and Yale University. Scholarship on the anthology has engaged biographers and critics writing on Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and editors tied to Harriet Monroe and Harold Monro. The work’s influence is traceable through subsequent movements and publications such as Objectivist poets, The Dial, The Little Review, and graduate curricula at Columbia University and Oxford University.

Category:Poetry anthologies Category:Modernist poetry