Discruption of poetic clichés in Imagist poetry

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate the ways in which Imagist poetry deconstructs traditional aesthetic clichés and poetic sentiments. Imagism is a leading movement of Anglo-American modernist poetry. The paper focuses on the radical deconstruction of Victorian era aesthetics standards in the Imagist poetry. During the time of Victorian era, traditional poetic forms such as sonnets and iambic pentameter were extremely popular. Nevertheless, central figures of imagist movement, especially, Ezra Pound, established absolutely new forms and traditions such as blank verse and free verse, as classical poetic meter forms were considered meaningless and unexpressive. Furthermore, the article touches upon the most famous poets of imagist movement and their works to show the aesthetic creed of modern Anglo-American poetry. The vital symbol of imagist poetry was ‘’image” which is defined as an intellectual complex in an instant of time. Finally the article points out that unlike the traditional romantic poetry, the creed of imagist poetry lies to the directness of presentation, economy of language, a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms and free them from abstraction.