Preludes experiments with techniques of Imagism, a poetic movement first formulated by Eliot’s friend Ezra Pound in 1913. Other practitioners included T.E. Hulme, H.D., Richard Aldington, F.S. Flint, and William Carlos Williams. Imagism was a reaction against the sentimentality of Romantic and Victorian poetry. It worked for clarity, precision, economy, and dryness, and it permitted free verse instead of meter. Imagism attempted to focus on a single image to reveal its essence. The movement was influenced by French symbolist and Japanese poetry. Imagism later inspired the Objectivist poets, Beat poets, and Language poets.
Preludes
by T.S. Eliot
