Imagism

Spare and exact, expressing feeling through concrete images without explaining what to feel.

• Imagism, movementthe Anglo-American movement of 1912 to 1917 whose principles the anthologies' prefaces set out
• Some Imagist Poets (1915, 1917), corpusthe two annual anthologies quoted here
• Richard Aldington, H. D., John Gould Fletcher, F. S. Flint, D. H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, writerthe six poets whose work makes up the anthologies

Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology (1915), Project Gutenberg ebook 30276, and Some Imagist Poets, 1917, ebook 79529. Two contiguous runs from each. Both volumes were published in the United States before 1929 and are public domain there. Aldington died in 1962 and Flint in 1960, so the anthologies remain in copyright in countries applying life plus seventy until 2033.

4 source files, 2,936 words

• Sentences average 9.1 to 34.7 words.
• Sentence lengths vary by at least 4.8 words — short and long in the same paragraph.
• At least 37% of the words in every 500 are distinct.
• Function words stay within 0.164 of the corpus's own distribution.
• Letter patterns stay within 0.337 of the corpus's.
• 9 phrases are banned outright.
• Anything shorter than 150 words is too small to measure.

{
  "schema": "katagami:voice-bands/v1",
  "sentence_length": {
    "mean": [
      9.1,
      34.7
    ],
    "stdev_min": 4.8
  },
  "banned_phrases": [
    "delve",
    "leverage",
    "seamless",
    "game-changer",
    "robust",
    "cutting-edge",
    "in today's fast-paced",
    "it's worth noting",
    "at the end of the day"
  ],
  "punctuation": {
    "exclamations_per_1000_words": [
      0,
      5
    ]
  },
  "type_token_ratio": {
    "min": 0.37,
    "window_words": 500
  },
  "function_words": {
    "max_distance": 0.164
  },
  "char_trigrams": {
    "max_distance": 0.337
  },
  "min_words_to_evaluate": 150
}

---
version: v3.3-lean
kind: voice
name: Imagism
slug: imagism
corpus:
  consent: public_domain
  author: Richard Aldington, H. D., John Gould Fletcher, F. S. Flint, D. H. Lawrence and Amy Lowell
  license: public domain (United States)
  samples: 4
  provenance: "Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology (1915), Project Gutenberg ebook 30276, and Some Imagist Poets, 1917, ebook 79529. Two contiguous runs from each. Both volumes were published in the United States before 1929 and are public domain there. Aldington died in 1962 and Flint in 1960, so the anthologies remain in copyright in countries applying life plus seventy until 2033."
  files:
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f5-1fdf-72e1-a97b-9e7d9517f976, source: "Some Imagist Poets (1915)", words: 747}
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f5-2469-7981-8b14-9a93159f14e2, source: "Some Imagist Poets (1915), continued", words: 732}
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f5-291d-79d2-a6fb-531d83e19acc, source: "Some Imagist Poets, 1917", words: 720}
    - {file_id: fl-01a087f5-2d6d-7d00-8ba9-d3184e7ad9bc, source: "Some Imagist Poets, 1917, continued", words: 737}
---

# Imagism

The image given once, without comment, in as few words as the image needs. A poem states what is there (the colour, the position, the movement) and stops before drawing anything from it. Lines are short and the syntax is ordinary speech broken where the perception breaks. Abstraction is refused; where a feeling belongs, a thing stands in its place.

## Never

- Never states the feeling the image carries
- Never uses an abstraction where a thing would serve
- Never explains a comparison
- Never adds a line after the poem is finished

## Gold standard samples

Each numbered entry is one complete corpus passage, quoted as it stands.

1. Source: Some Imagist Poets (1915), 747 words.

   I don't believe in God. I do believe in avenging gods Who plague us for sins we never sinned But who avenge us.

   That's why I'll never have a child, Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box For the moth to spoil and crush its bright colours, Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.

   THE POPLAR

   Why do you always stand there shivering Between the white stream and the road?

   The people pass through the dust On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars; The waggoners go by at dawn; The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

   Stir from your roots, walk, poplar! You are more beautiful than they are.

   I know that the white wind loves you, Is always kissing you and turning up The white lining of your green petticoat. The sky darts through you like blue rain, And the grey rain drips on your flanks And loves you. And I have seen the moon Slip his silver penny into your pocket As you straightened your hair; And the white mist curling and hesitating Like a bashful lover about your knees.

   I know you, poplar; I have watched you since I was ten. But if you had a little real love, A little strength, You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers And go walking down the white road Behind the waggoners.

   There are beautiful beeches down beyond the hill. Will you always stand there shivering?

   ROUND-POND

   Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breakers Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight. The shining of the sun upon the water Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals In a long wavering irregular flight.

   The water is cold to the eye As the wind to the cheek.

   In the budding chestnuts Whose sticky buds glimmer and are half-burst open The starlings make their clitter-clatter; And the blackbirds in the grass Are getting as fat as the pigeons.

   Too-hoo, this is brave; Even the cold wind is seeking a new mistress.

   DAISY

   "_Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes, Nunc_..."

   CATULLUS.

   You were my playmate by the sea. We swam together. Your girl's body had no breasts.

   We found prawns among the rocks; We liked to feel the sun and to do nothing; In the evening we played games with the others.

   It made me glad to be by you.

   Sometimes I kissed you, And you were always glad to kiss me; But I was afraid--I was only fourteen.

   And I had quite forgotten you, You and your name.

   To-day I pass through the streets. She who touches my arm and talks with me Is--who knows?--Helen of Sparta, Dryope, Laodamia....

   And there are you A whore in Oxford Street.

   EPIGRAMS

   A GIRL

   You were that clear Sicilian fluting That pains our thought even now. You were the notes Of cold fantastic grief Some few found beautiful.

   NEW LOVE

   She has new leaves After her dead flowers, Like the little almond-tree Which the frost hurt.

   OCTOBER

   The beech-leaves are silver For lack of the tree's blood.

   At your kiss my lips Become like the autumn beech-leaves.

   THE FAUN SEES SNOW FOR THE FIRST TIME

   Zeus, Brazen-thunder-hurler, Cloud-whirler, son-of-Kronos, Send vengeance on these Oreads Who strew White frozen flecks of mist and cloud Over the brown trees and the tufted grass Of the meadows, where the stream Runs black through shining banks Of bluish white.

   Zeus, Are the halls of heaven broken up That you flake down upon me Feather-strips of marble?

   Dis and Styx! When I stamp my hoof The frozen-cloud-specks jam into the cleft So that I reel upon two slippery points....

   Fool, to stand here cursing When I might be running!

   LEMURES

   In Nineveh And beyond Nineveh In the dusk They were afraid.

   In Thebes of Egypt In the dusk They chanted of them to the dead.

   In my Lesbos and Achaia Where the God dwelt We knew them.

   Now men say "They are not": But in the dusk Ere the white sun comes-- A gay child that bears a white candle-- I am afraid of their rustling, Of their terrible silence, The menace of their secrecy.

   H. D.

   H. D.

   THE POOL

   Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you--banded one?

2. Source: Some Imagist Poets (1915), continued, 732 words.

   Soon they will fall; Already smoke yearns upward. Clouds of dust, Crash of collapsing cubes.

   I prefer deeper patience, Monotony of stalled beasts. O angle-builders, Vainly have you prolonged your effort, For I descend amid you, Past rungs and slopes of curving slippery steel.

   WALK

   Sudden struggle for foothold on the pavement, Familiar ascension.

   I do not heed the city any more, It has given me a duty to perform. I pass along nonchalantly, Insinuating myself into self-baffling movements. Impalpable charm of back streets In which I find myself: Cool spaces filled with shadow. Passers-by, white hammocks in the sunlight.

   Bulging outcrush into old tumult; Attainment, as of a narrow harbour, Of some shop forgotten by traffic With cool-corridored walls.

   'BUS-TOP

   Black shapes bending, Taxicabs crush in the crowd. The tops are each a shining square Shuttles that steadily press through woolly fabric.

   Drooping blossom, Gas-standards over Spray out jingling tumult Of white-hot rays.

   Monotonous domes of bowler-hats Vibrate in the heat.

   Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic, Down the crowded street. The tumult crouches over us, Or suddenly drifts to one side.

   TRANSPOSITION

   I am blown like a leaf Hither and thither. The city about me Resolves itself into sound of many voices, Rustling and fluttering, Leaves shaken by the breeze.

   A million forces ignore me, I know not why, I am drunken with it all. Suddenly I feel an immense will Stored up hitherto and unconscious till this instant. Projecting my body Across a street, in the face of all its traffic.

   I dart and dash: I do not know why I go. These people watch me, I yield them my adventure.

   Lazily I lounge through labyrinthine corridors, And with eyes suddenly altered, I peer into an office I do not know, And wonder at a startled face that penetrates my own.

   Roses--pavement-- I will take all this city away with me-- People--uproar--the pavement jostling and flickering-- Women with incredible eyelids: Dandies in spats: Hard-faced throng discussing me--I know them all. I will take them away with me, I insistently rob them of their essence, I must have it all before night, To sing amid my green.

   I glide out unobservant In the midst of the traffic Blown like a leaf Hither and thither, Till the city resolves itself into a clamour of voices, Crying hollowly, like the wind rustling through the forest, Against the frozen housefronts: Lost in the glitter of a million movements.

   PERIPETEIA

   I can no longer find a place for myself: I go.

   There are too many things to detain me, But the force behind is reckless.

   Noise, uproar, movement Slide me outwards, Black sleet shivering Down red walls.

   In thick jungles of green, this gyration, My centrifugal folly, Through roaring dust and futility spattered, Will find its own repose.

   Golden lights will gleam out sullenly into silence, Before I return.

   MID-FLIGHT

   We rush, a black throng, Straight upon darkness: Motes scattered By the arc's rays.

   Over the bridge fluttering, It is theatre-time, No one heeds.

   Lost amid greenness We will sleep all night; And in the morning Coming forth, we will shake wet wings Over the settled dust of to-day.

   The city hurls its cobbled streets after us, To drive us faster.

   We must attain the night Before endless processions Of lamps Push us back. A clock with quivering hands Leaps to the trajectory-angle of our departure.

   We leave behind pale traces of achievement: Fires that we kindled but were too tired to put out, Broad gold fans brushing softly over dark walls, Stifled uproar of night.

   We are already cast forth: The signal of our departure Jerks down before we have learned we are to go.

   STATION

   We descend Into a wall of green. Straggling shapes: Afterwards none are seen.

   I find myself Alone. I look back: The city has grown.

   One grey wall Windowed, unlit. Heavily, night Crushes the face of it.

   I go on. My memories freeze Like birds' cry In hollow trees.

   I go on. Up and outright To the hostility Of night.

   F. S. FLINT

   F. S. FLINT

   TREES

   Elm trees and the leaf the boy in me hated long ago-- rough and sandy.

   Poplars and their leaves, tender, smooth to the fingers, and a secret in their smell I have forgotten.

3. Source: Some Imagist Poets, 1917, 720 words.

   As I stood among the bare rocks where salt lay, peeled and flaked in its white drift,

   I thought I would be the last you would want, I thought I would but scatter salt on the ripe grapes.

   I thought the vine-leaves would curl under, leaf and leaf-point at my touch,

   the yellow and green grapes would have dropped, my very glance must shatter the purple fruit.

   I had drawn away into the salt, myself, a shell emptied of life.

   IV

   I pluck the cyclamen red by wine-red and place the petals stiff ivory and bright fire against my flesh.

   Now I am powerless to draw back for the sea is cyclamen-purple, cyclamen-red, colour of the last grapes, colour of the purple of the flowers, cyclamen-coloured and dark.

   ADONIS

   I

   Each of us like you has died once, each of us like you has passed through drift of wood-leaves, cracked and bent and tortured and unbent in the winter frost-- then burnt into gold points, lighted afresh, crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, gold turned and re-welded in the sun-heat.

   Each of us like you has died once, each of us has crossed an old wood-path and found the winter leaves so golden in the sun-fire that even the live wood-flowers were dark.

   II

   Not the gold on the temple-front where you stand, is as gold as this, not the gold that fastens your sandal, nor the gold reft through your chiselled locks is as gold as this last year’s leaf, not all the gold hammered and wrought and beaten on your lover’s face, brow and bare breast is as golden as this.

   Each of us like you has died once, each of us like you stands apart, like you fit to be worshipped.

   PYGMALION

   I

   Shall I let myself be caught in my own light, shall I let myself be broken in my own heat, or shall I cleft the rock as of old and break my own fire with its surface?

   Does this fire thwart me and my craft, or my work-- does it cloud this light; which is the god, which the stone the god takes for his use?

   II

   Which am I, The stone or the power that lifts the rock from the earth? Am I the master of this fire, is this fire my own strength?

   Am I the master of this swirl upon swirl of light-- have I made it as in old times I made the gods from the rock?

   Have I made this fire from myself, or is this arrogance-- is this fire a god that seeks me in the dark?

   III

   I made image upon image for my use, I made image upon image, for the grace of Pallas was my flint and my help was Hephæstos.

   I made god upon god step from the cold rock, I made the gods less than men for I was a man and they my work.

   And now what is it that has come to pass for fire has shaken my hand, my strivings are dust.

   IV

   Now what is it that has come to pass? Over my head, fire stands, my marbles are alert.

   Each of the gods, perfect, cries out from a perfect throat: _you are useless, no marble can bind me, no stone suggest_.

   V

   They have melted into the light and I am desolate, they have melted, each from his plinth, each one departs. They have gone, what agony can express my grief?

   Each from his marble base has stepped into the light and my work is for naught.

   VI

   Now am I the power that has made this fire as of old I made the gods start from the rocks-- am I the god or does this fire carve me for its use?

   EURYDICE

   I

   So you have swept me back-- I who could have walked with the live souls above the earth, I who could have slept among the live flowers at last.

   So for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I am swept back where dead lichens drip dead cinders upon moss of ash.

   So for your arrogance I am broken at last, I who had lived unconscious, who was almost forgot.

4. Source: Some Imagist Poets, 1917, continued, 737 words.

   Under the soft grey windswept sky, Between two rows of yellow trees Soddenly dripping; The brown backs of an army Go marching.

   Like an enormous snake with undulatory movement, Past the old church with scarlet ivy hooding its stiff grey walls, Past the drowsy churchyard, Where wet leaves cling to the stones, Up the hill and past the village, Through the curving lines of hedgerows, Beyond the brow of the hill, lost in brown stubble, The brown backs of an army Go writhing into the distance.

   Under the flying clouds that hide the eastern sky, Footfalls, footfalls, repeated clamour of footfall;-- One, two, left, right, the road is full of them-- And the noise rises and strives to cling To the wet wind-blown branches, It penetrates the empty church and echoes up the aisle. Whirling leaves drift over the endless footfalls, Striving to hush them to quiet; O agonised hands!

   Under the soft grey rainy sky Of October; Under the swirling leaves that fall and settle amid them, Silent files of men, stiffly-backed and sombre, With a jagged fringe of rifles projecting from every shoulder, Move like an immense machine with a million feet; Marching, Into the darkness steadily marching, Incessantly swinging and falling, Swallowed up in the twistings of the hills, Vanishing amid the confused brown stubble of the earth.

   And the old earth holds its breath and listens: Was that a shot, a sob, a strangling cry? Silence. Only the trees hold out their empty arms in yearning, And a flight of rooks across them goes clanging away before night.

   F. S. FLINT

   SEARCHLIGHT

   There has been no sound of guns, no roar of exploding bombs; but the darkness has an edge that grits the nerves of the sleeper.

   He awakens; nothing disturbs the stillness, save perhaps the light, slow flap, once only, of the curtain dim in the darkness.

   Yet there is something else that drags him from his bed; and he stands in the darkness with his feet cold against the floor and the cold air round his ankles. He does not know why, but he goes to the window and sees a beam of light, miles high, dividing the night into two before him, still, stark and throbbing.

   The houses and gardens beneath lie under the snow quiet and tinged with purple.

   There has been no sound of guns, no roar of exploding bombs; only that watchfulness hidden among the snow-covered houses, and that great beam thrusting back into heaven the light taken from it.

   ZEPPELINS

   The bedroom is darkness. A dim cloud in one direction is the window with its curtains; the leaves of the trees outside rustle on one another. I fall to sleep.

   How long have I slept? A voice calls, a bell rings; the clamour and the ringing lengthen; I turn; it continues; not mine the name I hear, and yet there is alarm in it that concerns me? Am I awake? Over my nightdress I huddle my clothes; thrust my bare feet into slippers; and run down the stairs.

   From a blur of female faces distraught eyes stand out, and a woman’s voice cries: “The Zeppelins--they are attacking us; Avenue Road[A] is alight, High Mydelton[A] is burning. Did you not hear the guns? Oh, what shall we do?”

   [A] Fictitious names.

   We make jokes to reassure them. I shiver: chill? excitement? fear?

   Am I awake? My mind has been washed by sleep and left limp. The trees in the gardens opposite stand out behind the houses, a dark fretwork against the sky; and everywhere is stillness.

   Yet something slinks overhead through the sky; men will say that they saw it pass, and then a flash, a thud,-- a house has been cleft through three stories, and burns; and children burn in their beds, and men are burned rescuing them, an old man and woman are burned to death because the staircase has been smashed away.

   But we do not know this yet; we have only heard explosions, and have seen the glow of fires in the sky, quickly gone.

   We climb upstairs to the top story,-- to see! There is nothing to see ... But the silence and stillness are sinister. What has been taken away, what added? Brick and stone have become unreal, and only the primæval trees remain, with the primæval fear behind them and among them....

## Signature vocabulary

Reach for these:

- concrete nouns: salt, rock, gold-leaf, hedge, waggon
- colours and directions
- plain verbs of position and movement
- the definite article

These 4 habits identify the register faster than anything else:

- the image stated once and not returned to
- the line broken where the perception breaks, never at a metrical point
- a colour or a position doing the work an adjective of feeling would do
- the poem ending at the image, with no line after it

Words and constructions this voice refuses:

delve, leverage, seamless, game-changer, robust, cutting-edge, in today's fast-paced, it's worth noting, at the end of the day.

## Moves

- Put the thing in the first line
- Break the line at the turn of attention
- Hold to one image for the length of the poem
- Leave the comparison unexplained
- Stop at the image

## Register

- poem: free verse, short-lined, one image sustained
- diction: the language of common speech, exactly used
- close: at the image, without a conclusion

## Measured fingerprint

Measured over 4 passages and 2936 words. Sentence means run from 13.1 to 25.7 words, with a standard deviation inside each passage of 8.7 to 17.6, so the length varies as much as it averages. Windowed type-token ratio over 500 words sits between 0.46 and 0.62. Per thousand words the corpus carries 11.6 semicolons, 1.7 exclamation marks and 0.0 of the fourteen connectives the checker counts (however, moreover, thus and the rest). The commonest sentence openers are i (21), the (13), we (7), and (5), a (5).

Write to these numbers. The checker below reads them from the corpus and
applies them to anything written in this voice.

```json
{
  "schema": "katagami:voice-bands/v1",
  "sentence_length": {
    "mean": [
      9.1,
      34.7
    ],
    "stdev_min": 4.8
  },
  "banned_phrases": [
    "delve",
    "leverage",
    "seamless",
    "game-changer",
    "robust",
    "cutting-edge",
    "in today's fast-paced",
    "it's worth noting",
    "at the end of the day"
  ],
  "punctuation": {
    "exclamations_per_1000_words": [
      0,
      5
    ]
  },
  "type_token_ratio": {
    "min": 0.37,
    "window_words": 500
  },
  "function_words": {
    "max_distance": 0.164
  },
  "char_trigrams": {
    "max_distance": 0.337
  },
  "min_words_to_evaluate": 150
}
```

## Corpus

The full text of every passage above:

- Passage 1: /api/file/fl-01a087f5-1fdf-72e1-a97b-9e7d9517f976 (Some Imagist Poets (1915), 747 words)
- Passage 2: /api/file/fl-01a087f5-2469-7981-8b14-9a93159f14e2 (Some Imagist Poets (1915), continued, 732 words)
- Passage 3: /api/file/fl-01a087f5-291d-79d2-a6fb-531d83e19acc (Some Imagist Poets, 1917, 720 words)
- Passage 4: /api/file/fl-01a087f5-2d6d-7d00-8ba9-d3184e7ad9bc (Some Imagist Poets, 1917, continued, 737 words)