Some Imagist Poets, 1916: An Annual Anthology — Reading Companion

Precision and Its Discontents

The preface's emphasis on the 'exact word' is complicated by poems that foreground indecision and shifting moods. Flint's 'Terror' describes a moment before sleep when 'a voice calls my name in my ear,' only to find 'no one is there.' The poem's clarity lies in its precise rendering of an ambiguous sensation. Similarly, D. H. Lawrence's 'Erinnyes' invokes 'angry, unappeased' ghosts that are 'Invisible, yet strong,' a paradox that resists concrete imagery. The Imagist method, as practiced here, does not always produce hard-edged pictures; it can also capture the indistinct edges of perception. The preface itself acknowledges that a poem conveying indecision 'should be indecisive,' granting the poets license to blur focus when the subject demands it.

War as a Disruptive Force

Several poems confront the First World War directly, but rarely through battle scenes. Flint's 'War-Time' maps a psychological geography: the left road leads to 'bovine quiet' and gardens, while the right road leads to 'greater and greater disquiet,' tram-routes, and shouted news. The speaker chooses the latter, feeling 'the heat of Europe's fever' and declaring 'no spring and no woman's beauty, while that is burning.' Lawrence's 'Erinnyes' populates the present with the dead: 'So many ghosts among us, / Invisible, yet strong, / Between me and thee.' The war intrudes not as spectacle but as a pervasive atmosphere, altering perception of everyday spaces and relationships. The anthology's structure—placing such poems alongside quieter lyrics—amplifies this tension.

Domestic Interiors and Emotional Aftermaths

F. S. Flint's prose poem 'The Swan' recounts a domestic quarrel: the speaker feels 'gloomy, angry, stubborn' after an unnamed 'poison' works in him, until his wife's touch—'She stroked my hair'—restores love. The poem ends with him lighting a lamp and 'making this poem,' framing the creative act as a resolution of emotional turmoil. The setting is intimate—a room with 'papers and books'—and the conflict is internal, not external. This focus on private feeling, rendered through precise physical details (the lamp's 'circle of light,' the wife's gesture), exemplifies the Imagist commitment to presenting a 'mood of indecision' or emotional shift without explanatory commentary. The poem's structure mirrors the preface's claim that form should follow the poet's changing state of mind.

Readers approaching this anthology should attend to the interplay between its stated principles and its actual practice. The preface offers a framework, but the poems often test its boundaries, especially when dealing with war, grief, or psychological ambiguity. Notice how each poet handles the 'exact word'—sometimes it sharpens an image, sometimes it captures a blur. The collection rewards attention to small formal choices: line breaks, repetition, and the shift between verse and prose. These are not finished manifestos but working documents of a movement in transition.

There’s something about the Imagists’ insistence on clear presentation that always brings me back to quieter afternoons, when a poem feels less like a statement and more like a held breath. That same quality haunts the pear-tree symposium in A Tree with a Bird in it: A Symposium of Contemporary American Poets on Being Shown a Pear-tree on Which Sat a Grackle — Reading Notes, where the ordinary becomes a small, strange event we never quite finish explaining.