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The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.
-Carl Sandburg

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Imagism was a movement in art and poetry mostly before WWI.  It is a form of Modernism.

To employ common language that is precisely suited to the phrase

To search out new rhythms to express new moods

To welcome all subjects to the field of topics

To quell vagueness with exact images

To produce hard, clear verse free of confusion and distortion

To compress thought as though distilling the essence of meaning

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The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
-Ezra Pound, 1913

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All day I have watched the purple vine leaves

Fall into the water.

And now in the moonlight they still fall,

But each leaf is fringed with silver.
-Amy Lowell

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It will cut off, but watch what you can.

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William Carlos Williams and Modernism

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of writers changed the way that poetry was written. They focused less on traditional forms of meter and rhyme. They wrote from a less optimistic point of view. And they gave as much importance to images and describing a simple item as they did to talking about big themes like love and beauty. To these writers, called modernists, everyday items or scenes could mean as much as a lot of philosophical discussion about life.

One of the new modernist poets was William Carlos Williams, the son of immigrants who grew up in New Jersey. Williams was a doctor as well as a poet, and one thing that set him apart from the writers who came before him was the way he used language. Before the modernist movement, poetry was filled with flowery language. Modernist poets decided to do away with pompous phrases and extra descriptions. They saw a new way to express their ideas in the simple language of everyday writing.

But Williams took this a step further. While his peers were writing with simplified, but still intellectual, language, he decided to write in the language of everyday, American speech. Because his poems contained language that was even less academic than other poets, he was sometimes criticized for not being as smart as his contemporaries. But Williams' poems reflect the idea that even ordinary things can be important.

Let's look closer at a couple of poems by Williams to see how he communicated his message that the ordinary can also be extraordinary.

Language in 'The Red Wheelbarrow'

The most famous poem by Williams is called 'The Red Wheelbarrow.' He wrote it one day after seeing a red wheelbarrow and white chickens in the backyard of an old, poor man who had worked hard his whole life. Let's look closer at the poem.

'The Red Wheelbarrow'

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

The first thing you might notice about this poem is that it doesn't have any long words. Because Williams was writing about an everyday scene, he used everyday language. The lines sound like Williams might have said them to a buddy if they were just standing around observing the scene in the yard.

Again, this is an example of Williams using simplified language. But why not use highfalutin phrases with long words that would make him sound smart? Think about the description in the poem: it's of something ordinary, a red wheelbarrow in a backyard, and Williams is trying to show how even something normal like that can be special. The language he uses is just like the scene he describes: both ordinary and important.

Content and Challenge of the Red Wheelbarrow

We've already seen one important theme in 'The Red Wheelbarrow:' that ordinary things are important, too. But there are two other important aspects of the poem. These lie in the content of the poem and the challenge that Williams offers his readers.

As we saw, the content of the poem is little more than a description of a scene in someone's backyard. A red wheelbarrow, a little rainwater, some chickens...not much else is there. So what's the point then? Where's the big philosophical discussion that poems of the 1800s had in them?

Williams was part of a subset of modernism called imagism. Imagist writers believed that describing images was even more important than talking about big philosophical ideas. In Williams' own words, imagists believed that there are 'no ideas but in things.' In other words, the images a poet uses are what give meaning to the poem.

As a poem, 'The Red Wheelbarrow' reflects these ideas of imagism. Its focus is almost entirely on a simple, bare description of a tableau, or scene. The only part of the poem that isn't a part of this description is the first two lines, 'so much depends/upon.'

If you're wondering why you should care about a poem that's just about a red wheelbarrow, these two lines offer you a reason: it's not just about a red wheelbarrow - it's about something else. And with these opening lines, Williams issues a challenge to his readers. He dares them to figure out what else the poem is about.

There are lots of theories. Some people believe that Williams is commenting on the functionality of the wheelbarrow - the way it allows people to move things from one place to another easily. Others think it has to do with things seeming fresh and glowing after a literal or figurative storm. Still others believe that it's about how hard the old man who owned the wheelbarrow worked during his life.

How can so many people disagree on what the poem is about? That's because Williams leaves it vague. Whether you agree with one of the above interpretations or whether you have your own idea of why 'so much depends upon' that red wheelbarrow, the point is that Williams doesn't make his poem clear. He's issuing a challenge to his readers: 'You figure out why the red wheelbarrow is important, because I'm not going to tell you!'

This attitude became very common in poetry; even almost a century after Williams wrote 'The Red Wheelbarrow,' poets still use this type of writing. Poems today are often deliberately left vague and open to interpretation. So if you find it hard to understand what poets are talking about, you can thank William Carlos Williams for making readers think!

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william carlos williams's poems: 'the red wheelbarrow' and 'landscape with the fall of icarus' - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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William Carlos Williams's Poems: 'The Red Wheelbarrow' and 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of writers changed the way that poetry was written. They focused less on traditional forms of meter and rhyme. They wrote from a less optimistic point of view. And they gave as much importance to images and describing a simple item as they did to talking about big themes like love and beauty.

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so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams, 1923

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According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

-William Carlos Williams, 1960

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I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-William Carlos Williams, 1934

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The Imagist Movement also influenced painting such as this painting by German-American Oscar Bluemner.

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Form And Light is a piece of digital artwork by Oscar Bluemner which was uploaded on December 1st, 2013. The digital art may be purchased as wall art, home decor, apparel, phone cases, greeting cards, and more. All products are produced on-demand and shipped worldwide within 2 - 3 business days.

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Find the Brueghel painting "Icarus" describes.  Post a picture of it along with the date and artist's name in full.  What was Brueghel know for as a painter?

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Find the Brueghel painting "Icarus" describes.  Post a picture of it along with the date and artist's name in full.  What was Brueghel know for as a painter?

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"Icarus" is an allusion to a painting that is about a famous Greek myth.  Briefly research and summarize the story of Icarus.

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"Icarus" is an allusion to a painting that is about a famous Greek myth.  Briefly research and summarize the story of Icarus.

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An animation of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock"

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An animation of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock"

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T.S. Eliot reads his poem accompanied by a class animation project.

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The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock: Animated

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A Brief Guide to Imagism - Imagism was born in England and America in the early twentieth century. A reactionary movement against romanticism and Victorian poetry, imagism emphasized simplicity, clarity of expression, and precision through the use of exacting visual images.

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The link below is a picture of Amy Lowell, author of "Autumn." She was born in 1874 in Massachusetts.

Information source:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/amy-lowell

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define apparition

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Each student should reply in the comments with initials.

Which Imagist poem do you like best? Why?

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by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1560 A.D.) Brueghel was known for his depiction of scenes concerning landscapes and common folk/peasants.

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The word apparition is noun that means a ghost like image of a person. So in the poem" In the Station of a Metro", Pound is describing the people at the metro as ghost-like or phantoms.

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Empty gym, tense with the sound of leftover cheers, sits waiting.
A moment of silence, the first in years, makes you listen.
But kids burst into the room, a disturbance so mean
And its back to its labored routine.

(an imagist poem by me)

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In the Greek myth, Icarus and his father, Daedalus, are imprisoned in the Labyrinth which they created for the king because Daedalus helped the enemy of the king. In order to escape, Daedalus fashions wings for himself and Icarus out of wax. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly to close to the sun because the wings will melt. However, Icarus forgets this warning and flies to close to the sun. After his wings melt, he falls into the ocean and drowns.

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This image by Jacob Peter Gowy depicts the flight of Icarus as he falls from the sky after his wings melt.

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In Greek mythology, Icarus (the Latin spelling, conventionally adopted in English; Ancient Greek: Ἴκαρος, Íkaros, Etruscan: Vikare) is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth. Often depicted in art, Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax.

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-Born: October 30, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho
-Worked in London as a foreign editor of American magazines
-Moved to Italy in 1924
-Supported Adolf Hitler in WW2 and was imprisoned by American forces in Pisa for treason
-Had a mental breakdown in prison and was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Washington D.C. where he stayed for 12 years
-He moved back to Italy before his death
-Died: November 1, 1972

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I feel like this poem is set in Chicago because of “It sits looking over harbor and city” and Chicago has a large harbor. Also, Chicago is known as the Windy City and he says “and then it moves out” wich could be a result of the wind pushing the fog through the city. One other reason is that he lived in Chicago for many years and he wrote other poems set in Chicago. Does anyone else see anyother reasons to believe the poem is set in Chicago?

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This poem, written by William Carlos Williams, was actually a note that he left his wife one morning on his way to work. It is not his most well known poem but is still a creative piece. The poem embodies Williams look on poetry to "free the line" and let poetry be anything that is wants. His poetry was rooted in reality and used lots of imagery. The poem is a snapshot of a daily occurrence yet the choice of words, regardless of how few, creates a masterpiece of intimate detail and description.

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Was born in Ruthford, NJ on September 17th, 1883. He was not only a writer but a doctor as well. After receiving his MD from the University of Pennsylvania he returned to Ruthford.  He started to work on his writing which included poems, novels, and plays. He continued his writing up until his death on March 4, 1963, due to a heart attack.

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Born on January 6, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois.
Dropped out of school at age 13 to drive a milk wagon.
He had three children and a wife.
He was Swedish American.
Most known for his biography of Aberham Lincoln and his poem “Chicago”.
He died in Flat Rock NC on July/22/1967 at the age of 89