What was the imagist movement? How did it influence modernist poetry?

What was the imagist movement? How did it influence modernist poetry?

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines Imagism as “a movement in poetry advocating free verse and the expression of ideas and emotions through clear precise images". Imagism as a literary movement flourished in England and America between 1912 and 1917. Its chief exponents included Ezra Pound, T.E.Hulme, Hilda Doolittle, Richard Aldington and Amy Lowell. But it was Pound who christened the movement as Imagism.  In 1912 he wanted to send some poems written by Hilda Doolittle ('H.D') to Poetry, a magazine edited by Harriet Monroe. Since Hilda Doolittle had not published any poems till that date, Pound felt that it was better for her if she belonged to some particular school of poetry. Therefore, he added to the manuscript the words "H.D Imagiste". That was the origin of the imagist school.  

        Unfortunately, from the very beginning, controversies haunted the school. D.H. Lawrence who wrote some imagist poems dumped the movement as "just an advertising scheme" of Pound. All the controversies that blotted the movement are documented by Timothy Materer in an interesting article- "Make it sell! Ezra Pound Advertises Modernism". Materer sees Pound as a shrewd propagandist who selected a French term to name the school, as cultural movements are best advertised in that language. The French title, moreover, implied some romantic connection with the Greats like Baudelaire and Mallarme. Pound, according to Materer, also hinted at some mysterious aspects of the school, again true to the advertiser's practice of referring to some "secret ingredient x", "xylitol"  … that only the user of the product can appreciate". Though his advertising genius made the Imagist movement an immediate success (four anthologies were published in as many years), Pound was in for a disappointment as the movement was hijacked by Amy Lowell.

                Amy Lowell who later became the leader of the movement was brought into it by Pound himself. It was Pound who published one of her poems in his anthology Des Imagistes (1914). But she had enormous financial resources and literary connections and a "Madison Avenue ruthlessness" (Materer) to match them. She took over the Imagist brought and out three anthologies in 1915, 1916 and 1917 to which Pound refused to contribute. However, he could do nothing but to dub the movement as "Amygism" and its new leader as "hippopoetess". Pound turned away from Imagism to a new movement called Vorticism, which was essentially not much different from the former. Hilda Doolittle's poems dominated Vorticism also.........................................................................................................................................

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