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IRRADIATIONS. SAND AND SPRAY. JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.
JAPANESE LYRICS. Translated by LAFCADIO HEARN.
AFTERNOONS OF APRIL. GRACE HAZARD CONKLING.
THE CLOISTER: A VERSE DRAMA. EMILE VERHAEREN.
STILLWATER PASTORALS AND OTHER POEMS. PAUL SHIVELL.
TURNS AND MOVIES, AND OTHER TALES IN VERSE. CONRAD AIKEN.
GOBLINS AND PAGODAS. JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
In bringing the second volume of _Some Imagist Poets_ before the public, the authors wish to express their gratitude for the interest which the 1915 volume aroused. The discussion of it was widespread, and even those critics out of sympathy with Imagist tenets accorded it much space. In the Preface to that book, we endeavoured to present those tenets in a succinct form. But the very brevity we employed has lead to a great deal of misunderstanding. We have decided, therefore, to explain the laws which govern us a little more fully. A few people may understand, and the rest can merely misunderstand again, a result to which we are quite accustomed.
In the first place “Imagism” does not mean merely the presentation of pictures. “Imagism” refers to the manner of presentation, not to the subject. It means a clear presentation of whatever the author wishes to convey. Now he may wish to convey a mood of indecision, in which case the poem should be indecisive; he may wish to bring before his reader the constantly shifting and changing lights over a landscape, or the varying attitudes of mind of a person under strong emotion, then his poem must shift and change to present this clearly. The “exact” word does not mean the word which exactly describes the object in itself, it means the “exact” word which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet's mind at the time of writing the poem. Imagists deal but little with similes, although much of their poetry is metaphorical. The reason for this is that while acknowledging the figure to be an integral part of all poetry, they feel that the constant imposing of one figure upon another in the same poem blurs the central effect.