Sunday, February 22, 2009

Adventures on Google, redux

I went and googled "imagism" to see what I would find. Intrigued, I went to "images" to see the results for "imagism." Get the joke? but it gets better. the first picture that comes up is this:

This picture you see, is the complete antithesis of imagism. In a certain way, it does make use of solid shapes and distinct lines, which the group tended to approve of in its aesthetic. However this is where the similarities end. The lush, overpowering, and somewhat bruising color and the fantastical images would not be seen at a station on the metro. The family of flowers and the wild horses belong more to symbolism, as well as the river being a snake. I won't go into the birds. Frankly this picture (which is titled: "imagism 1.0") is representative of every other trend in poetry before and after imagism: Romanticism, symbolism, and the Beat movement come to mind.

No comments: