Imagism was a brief, complex yet influential poetic movement of the early 1900s, a time of reaction against late nineteenth-century poetry which Ezra Pound, one of the key imagist poets, described as ‘a doughy mess of third-hand Keats, Wordsworth ... half-melted, lumpy’. In contrast, imagist poetry, although riddled with conflicting definitions, was broadly characterized by brevity, precision, purity of texture and concentration of meaning: as Pound stated, it should ‘use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something ... it does not use images as ornaments. The image itself is the speech’. It was this freshness and directness of approach which means that, as Peter Jones says in his invaluable Introduction, ‘imagistic ideas still lie at the centre of our poetic practice’.

"Some Imagist Poets" from Amy Lowell. American poet of the imagist school (1874-1925).

This is the first time that a substantial and representative selection of Flint's poetry has been collected. The Introduction supplies important biographical information, and traces how Flint became involved, along with Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, and H.D., in the Imagist project. There are sixty-three poems drawn from Flint's three published collections of poetry--In the Net of the Stars (1909), Cadences (1915), and Otherworld (1920), and a further twenty-two uncollected or previously unpublished poems, making eighty-five poems in all. The Introduction also offers a sustained and illuminating discussion of the evolution of Flint's art through three volumes. In addition, there are five appendices, among them Flint's important essays, "Imagisme" and "The History of Imagism." The book seeks to establish Flint as a significant contributor to early Modernist poetry, i.e., Imagism, and to reassess the qualities and achievement of an undeservedly overlooked poet.

This short introduction to Modernism analyses the movement from the perspective of English and American literature. Provides a critical overview of some of the central texts of literary Modernism. Covers both established works and those that have only recently come to critical attention. Includes detailed discussion of major authors, including T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Wallace Stevens and H.D.