Imagism: Essays on Initiation, Impact and Influence

As Helen Carr writes in her Introduction, “Imagism has always been popular with readers.” True then and true now. Strangely enough, Imagism has not grown old in the century after its birth, and these essays about Imagists of old help to explain why it continues to attract readers in the 21stcentury. The movement that sprung up so haphazardly turned out to be the wellspring of Modernism in literature, discernible not only in Ezra Pound’s poetry but in Ernest Hemingway’s prose. Imagism begat Modernism, and its beneficial influence spread to writers as diverse as T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and Wallace Stevens. These essays, by showing once more how wide-ranging Imagist innovation was, are stimulating and readable--like Imagism itself.