FROM SUBJECT MATTER TO EMBODIED EMOTION: EVALUATING AMY LOWELL'S IMAGIST FRAMEWORK IN EZRA POUND'S RIPOSTES AND LUSTRA

Imagism – introduced by Ezra Pound – informs a theoretical paradigm for modern poetry writing. Imagists liberated poetry writing from observing the strict standards of meter or rhythm and introduced the use of free verse, where natural rhythm is carried through each cadence in the embodied new emotion. This study will explore the experimentation with formal features of the imagistic strains, extended by Amy Lowell, in the poetics of Ezra Pound found in his two poetry collections: Ripostes (1912) and Lustra (1916), that include poems “In a Station of the Metro”, “Portrait D’Une Femme”, “The Garden”, “The Gipsy”, and “Tame Cat”, as to analyze how Pound employs common speech, exact, clear, and hard words, free verse, natural rhythm, cadences, and concentration of thoughts in concrete images, making intellect inseparable from emotion, and freeing the embodied emotion from the choice of subject matter. The study of Imagism usually demarcates certain stylistic ideals only, such as poetry being objective, direct expression with no excessive use of adjectives, no metaphors that won’t permit examination, and straight talk. Yet, Imagistic features suggested by Amy Lowell make a very valid theoretical interpretive framework which, as such, forms the content and subject-matter of discursive intervention and debate in this paper. Keywords: Poetic Craft, Common Speech, Concrete Image, Free Verse, Concentration