ricks:

Preface:  Anybody who seriously reads EP (seriously) is my ally.  Please
don't take my BS personally.

Body:
In my stupor, I guess what I meant/mean was/is that Imagism (big "I") is
to me merely a bit of promotion.  Pound's (forgive me for not
remembering exactly -- I'm still at work about to go home and don't have
the texts at hand) "programme" for Imagism (can't believe I can't
remember the time/paper/name: oops!)  was his first major public
critical volley in his war on fustian, but not, to me (a guy who was in
the last Vietnam draft lottery), a particularly defining moment for
poetry "as such" (lol, the "ding an sich" thing?).   By then, (I mean,
"at that time, i.e. 1970 or so) there was so much pseudo-haiku and fake
Imagism one would prefer to go out and look at a dead fish every day for
some number of days than read it -- or even to read Tennyson, Spenser,
or Milton (not an attack on them).

Okay, this exegesis is a mess.

Your earlier comment

        hunting "The Cantos" for Imagist sub-poems is very rewarding

is excellent within the context of particularly preferring a certain type of poetry, which one could, to concede the point, be called "Imagism".

Okay, so now it would seem (as a result of my intellectual suicide above), that I believe in "Imagism".  But I still don't find it (id est Imagism) particularly interesting per se.  E.g.:

        the army vocabulary contains almost 48 words
one verb and participle one substantive "hylay"  [dj transliteration, inventive but not good]
        one adjective and one phrase sexless that is
used as a sort of pronoun
from a watchman's club to a vamp or fair lady
                (Canto LXXVII)

(Not a random selection, but the closest to random that I could manufacture tonight.)

I don't think you'd describe this as Imagism.... Or would you?

I'm not saying that it's the BEST example of an approach of EP I love, but it IS an example... Shall we call it "Browningism"?



ricks wrote:

>Dirk
>
>There is a difference between imagism (little i)and Imagism (big I)   You
>said you didn't believe in imagism (little i).  How about Imagism (big I)?
>
>I am not trying to be cute about the difference.  Amygism was all about
>imagism with a small i.
>
>Rick Seddon
>McIntosh, NM.
>
>
>

--

D irk Johnson
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