This whole issue of what Pound meant by "imagism" rarely takes into
account his descriptions of "The Seafarer" or a single Noh play as "an
image."
 
On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Jacob Korg wrote:
 
> Dear Jason:
>         Yes, I think there are the elements of a controversy here.
> Schneidau, and Grieve following him, have strongly attacked the "visual"
> approach to Imagism, but comment in Poetry magazine and elsewhere shows
> that the Imagists did have a pictorial effect in mind.This may be worth an
> article reviewing the situation, but I find Pound writing that the most
> "poetic"poetry "seems as if sculpture or painting" were forcing their way
> into words, and that art's highest function is to fill the mind with "a
> noble profusion of sounds and images" -- EP's review of Yeats' poetry,
> Poetry mag, May, 1914. Then, Alice Corbin Henderson's review of Des
> Imagistes  -- "Imagism isd essentially a graphic art. . . the visual
> element plays an important part inthe poems in this volume"-- Poetry,
> October, 1914.
>         I will have to look at the Pound-Corbin letters to see whether
> Pound challenged her on this.But so far it seems that the Imagists were
> not excluding "imagery" in the usual sense or visual impressions.
>
 
                                Stephen Adams
                                Department of English
                                University of Western Ontario
                                London, Canada  N6A-3K7
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