History

Influenced by earlier writers such as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, and the English Symbolists.

Imagism, primarily as a response to the excess of Victorian literature, was straightforward and meant to be available to common people.

Ezra Pound T. S. Eliot

Elements of Modernism

Direct treatment of the "thing", whether subjective or objective.

To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

Complete freedom of subject matter. Free verse encouraged along with other

new rhythms. Common speech language was used, and

the exact word was always to be used, as opposed to the almost exact word.

Influence

"buy a dictionary and learn the meanings of words" - Ezra Pound

Influence on modern literature as we know It

Great writers such as Gertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings, and Ernest Hemingway took part in the modernist movement

Charles Henri Ford

Imagism began in 1909 in the Poets’ Club in London, where Pound, Flint, and Adlington among others developed the main tenets of Imagism. After the WWI, the London expatriate writing scene flourished, where poets like Stein, Loy, Cummings, and Hemingway met to share and collaborate. These circles of poets were also involved with other notable artists such as Picasso, Georges Braque, and Constantine Brancusi, resulting in a sort of cross pollination between art forms.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

Violin and Candlestick by Georges Braque

Most great ‘modern’ writers took part in the modernist movement, its value in the literary canon is quite evident. The primary values behind modernism were to move away from excess and make poetry to the point and available. They found beauty in sound and simplicity.

Influence on the San Francisco Renaissance, The Beats, The Black Mountain Poets, The Language Poets