Des Imagistes - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Des Imagistes, edited by Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

and published in 1914, was the first anthology of the Imagism

Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...

movement. It was published in The Glebe
The Glebe (literary magazine)
The Glebe was a literary magazine edited by Alfred Kreymborg and Man Ray from 1913 to 1914. The first issue was published from Ridgefield, New Jersey, while the rest of the run was published in New York by Alfred & Charles Boni. Ten issues were produced, with a circulation of 300. Issue number 5...

in February 1914, and later that year as a book by Charles and Albert Boni in New York, and Harold Monro

Harold Monro

Harold Edward Monro was a British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London which helped many famous poets bring their work before the public....

's Poetry Bookshop in London.

The eleven authors featured were: Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...

, Skipwith Cannell

Skipwith Cannell

Skipwith Cannell was an American poet associated with the Imagist group. His surname is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. He was a friend of William Carlos Williams, and like Ezra Pound he came from Philadelphia...

, John Cournos

John Cournos

John Cournos , a writer of Russian-Jewish background, was born in the Ukraine, whence his family emigrated when he was aged 10. During the 1910s and 1920s, he lived in Britain, where his literary career started...

, H. D., F. S. Flint

F. S. Flint

Frank Stuart Flint was an English poet and translator who was a prominent member of the Imagist group. Ford Madox Ford called him "one of the greatest men and one of the beautiful spirits of the country"....

, Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...

, James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell

Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...

, Ezra Pound, Allen Upward

Allen Upward

Allen Upward was a poet, lawyer, politician and teacher. His work was included in the first anthology of Imagist poetry, Des Imagistes, which was edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914....

, William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

Aldington later wrote regarding the title: "What Ezra thought that meant remains a mystery, unless the word "Anthologie" was assumed to precede it. Amy Lowell's anthologies were called Some Imagist Poets, so she may have supposed that Ezra thought "Des Imagistes" meant "Quelques Imagistes." The use of French for the name of this poetry collection by English, Irish and American authors is attributed to Pound's liking for foreign-language titles."

Further reading