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The Verse Revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, H.D. and the Imagists
The Verse Revolutionaries tells the story of the Imagists, a turbulent and colourful group of poets, who came together in London in the years before the First World War. As T. S. Eliot was to say, appropriately re-invoking the Imagist habit of turning anything they admired into French, the imagist movement was modern poetry's point de repère, the landmark venture that inaugurated Anglo-American literary modernism. A disparate, stormy group, who had dispersed before the twenties began, these 'verse revolutionaries' received both abuse and acclaim, but their poetry, fragmented, pared-down, elliptical yet direct, exerted a powerful influence on modernist writers, and contributed vitally to the transformation of American and British cultural life in those crucial years.
Among those involved were the Americans Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher, and the British T.E. Hulme, F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington and D.H. Lawrence. On the edges of the story are figures such as W.B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis and T. S. Eliot. They came from very different class backgrounds, a heterogeneous mélange then only possible in a great metropolis like London.
The Verse Revolutionaries traces the passionate interactions, love affairs and bitter quarrels of these aspiring poets from 1905 to 1917. Helen Carr unpicks the story of how they came together, what they gained from each other in the heady excitement of those early days, and what were the fissures that eventually broke up the movement and their friendships in the dark days of the Great War. Her compelling account challenges the conventional view of Imagism, and offers an acute analysis of the poetry, of the psychology of the individuals involved, and of the evolution and emergence of a transformative cultural movement.
Among those involved were the Americans Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher, and the British T.E. Hulme, F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington and D.H. Lawrence. On the edges of the story are figures such as W.B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis and T. S. Eliot. They came from very different class backgrounds, a heterogeneous mélange then only possible in a great metropolis like London.
The Verse Revolutionaries traces the passionate interactions, love affairs and bitter quarrels of these aspiring poets from 1905 to 1917. Helen Carr unpicks the story of how they came together, what they gained from each other in the heady excitement of those early days, and what were the fissures that eventually broke up the movement and their friendships in the dark days of the Great War. Her compelling account challenges the conventional view of Imagism, and offers an acute analysis of the poetry, of the psychology of the individuals involved, and of the evolution and emergence of a transformative cultural movement.
976 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 25, 2014
It seems Ironic that a 'movement' most remembered by a two line poem should be celebrated in a book that's nearly a thousand pages long. It's a tribute to Carr's writing that while lifting the book makes gym visits redundant, it never flags and I didn't skip read any of it. Though for a while I felt as though I'd lived through ten years reading the book.
The title is significant: The verse revolutionaries...it's not so much about the poems as the people who wrote and argued about them. And so it gets close to "why"? in a way a non biographical, highly theorised account couldn't. In that sense it is a fine companion to K.K. Ruthven's "Ezra Pound as Literary Critic" and almost stands in opposition to Kenner's "The Pound Era". If nothing else it queries the idea that any one person dominated the period under discussion. (Roughly the 1890s to the end of the First World War).
The book is a series of mini biographies of those involved staring with fairly detailed introductions to Pound and H.D and then weaving in the stories of the rest of the cast. The range of sources is impressive. I'm not sure about Carr's willingness to mine fiction for biographical detail.
The biographical approach has numerous advantages, not least that it restores characters who are usually only names in a list or attached to scraps of verse, or relegated to foot notes to the story. As Carr says, there are many narratives, "Pound Come to England and modernised poetry" is only one. She provides some of the alternatives here.
The detailed biographical approach restores the messiness of history, and also reasserts chronology. While it is indisputable that Pound played Impresario, the chronology points out that he was a late comer to the discussions and that at the time, his own poetic output and knowledge was not sufficient to distinguish him from the others. POund's poetry pre 'Cathay" has little to commend it and it would take someone of Kenner's ingenuity to claim it was "revolutionary".
Arguments over who invented the name, or who invented the movement, or who owned the movement, or even who belonged in it and why, which took up so much time and energy then and sometimes still does in academic circles, are put into context.
Carr's own stance is summed up by a quote from Fletcher in her preface: "Imagism, like all other literary movements, was a general movement, a product and impulse of the time" . The relation of the changes in poetry to painting, sculpture, philosophy and significantly to Europe's "discovery" of non European art, is explored through the enthusiasms of the participants.
Was it really a movement? DId "Imagism" mean anything more than a marketing term first Pound then Lowell used to market a small group of friends? Was there even a "revolution"? The book won't answer this. What does become obvious is that "imagism" as a concept, for all its rhetoric of "hardness" and "precision" and "absence of slither", was no more precise or slither free than that subsequent slithering nasty "Modernism".
Carr writes well. She keeps the story moving, and balanced, while not shirking the nastier aspects of the story. H.D. and Lowell come out of the shadows of Pound, who doesn't appear in a very flattering light though Carr isn't above writing: "One has to sympathise to Pound". She is a presence in her own story, commenting occasionally on the actors and the action. Lewis we learn, was as skilful in the use of the apostrophe as a modern Undergraduate.
It's tempting to go back and reread 'The Pound Era" in the light of this book. But life might be too short for that right now. Without taking sides too blatantly, which Kenner did, Carr returns poetry to the human mess of history: who liked, disliked, slept with, failed to sleep with, fell out with, despised, was despised by, who knew whom, who worked the prevailing system better; and in the messiness of history and human interactions, is where I think poetry belongs
The title is significant: The verse revolutionaries...it's not so much about the poems as the people who wrote and argued about them. And so it gets close to "why"? in a way a non biographical, highly theorised account couldn't. In that sense it is a fine companion to K.K. Ruthven's "Ezra Pound as Literary Critic" and almost stands in opposition to Kenner's "The Pound Era". If nothing else it queries the idea that any one person dominated the period under discussion. (Roughly the 1890s to the end of the First World War).
The book is a series of mini biographies of those involved staring with fairly detailed introductions to Pound and H.D and then weaving in the stories of the rest of the cast. The range of sources is impressive. I'm not sure about Carr's willingness to mine fiction for biographical detail.
The biographical approach has numerous advantages, not least that it restores characters who are usually only names in a list or attached to scraps of verse, or relegated to foot notes to the story. As Carr says, there are many narratives, "Pound Come to England and modernised poetry" is only one. She provides some of the alternatives here.
The detailed biographical approach restores the messiness of history, and also reasserts chronology. While it is indisputable that Pound played Impresario, the chronology points out that he was a late comer to the discussions and that at the time, his own poetic output and knowledge was not sufficient to distinguish him from the others. POund's poetry pre 'Cathay" has little to commend it and it would take someone of Kenner's ingenuity to claim it was "revolutionary".
Arguments over who invented the name, or who invented the movement, or who owned the movement, or even who belonged in it and why, which took up so much time and energy then and sometimes still does in academic circles, are put into context.
Carr's own stance is summed up by a quote from Fletcher in her preface: "Imagism, like all other literary movements, was a general movement, a product and impulse of the time" . The relation of the changes in poetry to painting, sculpture, philosophy and significantly to Europe's "discovery" of non European art, is explored through the enthusiasms of the participants.
Was it really a movement? DId "Imagism" mean anything more than a marketing term first Pound then Lowell used to market a small group of friends? Was there even a "revolution"? The book won't answer this. What does become obvious is that "imagism" as a concept, for all its rhetoric of "hardness" and "precision" and "absence of slither", was no more precise or slither free than that subsequent slithering nasty "Modernism".
Carr writes well. She keeps the story moving, and balanced, while not shirking the nastier aspects of the story. H.D. and Lowell come out of the shadows of Pound, who doesn't appear in a very flattering light though Carr isn't above writing: "One has to sympathise to Pound". She is a presence in her own story, commenting occasionally on the actors and the action. Lewis we learn, was as skilful in the use of the apostrophe as a modern Undergraduate.
It's tempting to go back and reread 'The Pound Era" in the light of this book. But life might be too short for that right now. Without taking sides too blatantly, which Kenner did, Carr returns poetry to the human mess of history: who liked, disliked, slept with, failed to sleep with, fell out with, despised, was despised by, who knew whom, who worked the prevailing system better; and in the messiness of history and human interactions, is where I think poetry belongs
September 14, 2022
Brilliant book for trying to get your head around H.D. and Ezra Pound
January 1, 2012
Brilliant book for trying to get your head around H.D. and Ezra Pound. Though they are not my favourite poets, this book really opened up their poetry and I came away with a greater appreciation of their work (and a more acute dislike for the Poets as people - especially Pound!)
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January 17, 2014821.91209 C3116 2009
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews