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Published April 1915_ PREFACE In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled "Des Imagistes." It was acollection of the work of various young poets, presented together as aschool. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in newmovements in the arts, and has already become a household word.Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among thecontributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them alongdifferent paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume havetherefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we havebeen joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the firstvolume, our wider scope making this possible. In this new book we have followed a slightly different arrangement to thatof the former Anthology. Instead of an arbitrary selection by an editor,each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considershis best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appearedin book form. A sort of informal committee--consisting of more than halfthe authors here represented--have arranged the book and decided whatshould be printed and what omitted, but, as a general rule, the poetshave been allowed absolute freedom in this direction, limitations of spaceonly being imposed upon them. Also, to avoid any appearance of precedence,they have been put in alphabetical order. As it has been suggested that much of the misunderstanding of the formervolume was due to the fact that we did not explain ourselves in a preface,we have thought it wise to tell the public what our aims are, and why weare banded together between one set of covers. The poets in this volume do not represent a clique. Several of them arepersonally unknown to the others, but they are united by certain commonprinciples, arrived at independently. These principles are not new; theyhave fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry,indeed of all great literature, and they are simply these:-- 1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the _exact_word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word. 2. To create new rhythms--as the expression of new moods--and not to copyold rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon"free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as fora principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet mayoften be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. Inpoetry, a new cadence means a new idea. 3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good artto write badly about aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily badart to write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artisticvalue of modern life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing souninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911. 4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school ofpainters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly andnot deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It isfor this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirkthe real difficulties of his art. 5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite. 6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essenceof poetry. The subject of free-verse is too complicated to be discussed here. We maysay briefly, that we attach the term to all that increasing amount ofwriting whose cadence is more marked, more definite, and closer knit thanthat of prose, but which is not so violently nor so obviously accented asthe so-called "regular verse." We refer those interested in the questionto the Greek Melic poets, and to the many excellent French studies on thesubject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy deGourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Ghéon,Robert de Souza, André Spire, etc. We wish it to be clearly understood that we do not represent an exclusiveartistic sect; we publish our work together because of mutual artisticsympathy, and we propose to bring out our coöperative volume each year fora short term of years, until we have made a place for ourselves and ourprinciples such as we desire. CONTENTS RICHARD ALDINGTONChildhood 3The Poplar 10Round-Pond 12Daisy 13Epigrams 15The Faun sees Snow for the First Time 16Lemures 17 H. D.The Pool 21The Garden 22Sea Lily 24Sea Iris 25Sea Rose 27Oread 28Orion Dead 29
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