The Imagist Poets

This book offers a lively account of the Imagist Poets, the first significant group of modernist poets writing in English. It discusses what their writing achieved, and analyses the theoretical claims of Imagism in relation to its poetic practice. It revises the received view of Imagism by drawing upon current re-readings of modernism in terms of gender and sexuality, cultural geography, and the idea of literary institutions and formations. The book shows the variety of practice within the Imagist group, and shifts the focus from seeing Imagism purely as the creation of Ezra Pound, by granting a much stronger focus to often overlooked figures such as Amy Lowell, F.S. Flint and John Gould Fletcher. The book also examines the cultural formation of Imagism as a movement competing within the artistic avant-garde of London in the early twentieth century.