Imagism
Description
As Helen Carr writes in her Introduction, “Imagism has always been popular with readers.” True then and true now. Strangely enough, Imagism has not grown old in the century after its birth, and these essays about Imagists of old help to explain why it continues to attract readers in the 21stcentury. The movement that sprung up so haphazardly turned out to be the wellspring of Modernism in literature, discernible not only in Ezra Pound’s poetry but in Ernest Hemingway’s prose. Imagism begat Modernism, and its beneficial influence spread to writers as diverse as T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and Wallace Stevens. These essays, by showing once more how wide-ranging Imagist innovation was, are stimulating and readable — like Imagism itself.
Author Bio
John Gery is a poet, critic, editor, and collaborative translator. Originally from Lititz, Pennsylvania, he has lived on both coasts as well as in the Midwest but has spent much of the last thirty years in New Orleans. Gery's poetry ranges from formal verse and narrative structures to lyrical poems engaged in language play, irony and paradox. His books of poetry include, among others, Charlemagne: A Song of Gestures (1983), The Enemies of Leisure (1995), American Ghost: Selected Poems (1999), Davenport's Version (2003), A Gallery of Ghosts (2008), Lure (2012), and Have at You Now! (2014). His work has appeared in journals throughout the U.S., as well as in the UK, Europe and Canada, and he has been translated into seven languages.
Gery has also published criticism on a wide range of poets, from John Ashbery and Gwendolyn Brooks to Ezra Pound and Marilyn Chin. He is also the author of Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry: Ways of Nothingness (1996). His grants have included an NEA Fellowship, a Fulbright (Serbia), residencies at Bucknell University and the University of Minnesota, and Artist Fellowships from the Louisiana Division of the Arts. A Research Professor of English and Seraphia Leyda Teaching Fellow at the University of New Orleans, he also directs the Ezra Pound Center for Literature, Brunnenburg, Italy, summer seminars in the Poetry of Ezra Pound and Advanced Poetry Writing, and is General Editor of the EPCL Book Series for UNO Press.
