Rick

But that's precisely my point.

A poem can have Imagist
passages and non-Imagist passages.

And, if a poem can have a mixture of types, why call it by the name of
one of the types? And, if this is true of a single poem, how does one
come to define a poet with as much breadth as EP as an "Imagist" Poet?
 Because of the Imagist Manifesto?  Well, he frequently meets most of
the criteria of the Manifesto, but rarely or never all at once, and he
frequently meets only a couple at most. Unless we re-read the Imagist
Manifesto as an incipient expression of Vorticism, then translate the
terms of Imagism into Vorticist terms, which would be merely
anachronistic.  And then, of course, there's the historical usage of the
word "Imagist", which tends to be associated primarily with a certain
approach to imagery.  But, in terms of the Imagist Manifesto, "To
present an image"  is only the fourth point.

I think you have something when  you say that the Ideogrammatic Method
came out of Imagism, but I would rather say that EP's investigations led
him beyond Imagism to the Ideogrammatic Method, which isn't to say that
the Ideogrammatic Method is a type or species of Imagism.  By the time
we get to the Vortex, it seems to me that Imagism has been completely
superseded, as when a child grows into a man.  Though many of the
child's elements continue in the man, we no longer refer to him as a
child, do we?  I mean, if it's a Vorticist poem, why call it an Imagist
poem?

Dirk Johnson

Richard Seddon wrote:

>Dirk
>
>Yes I would.
>
>Imagism does not require absolute commitment.  A poem can have Imagist
>passages and non-Imagist passages.  I read the ideogram I quoted  as an
>Imagist or Vorticist sub-poem consisting of 5 Images.   "Ply over Ply" binds
>the ideogram and is an insistent signal as to how to read the sub-poem.
>What exactly the ideogram comes to represent is still growing in me.
>
>Rick Seddon
>McIntosh, NM
>
>
>