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Ezra Pound’s short essay ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’, which was published in Poetry magazine in 1913 and does have the right to the title ‘Imagist manifesto’. Since Imagism was the starting-point for much modernist English poetry, ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’ is worth exploring, summarising, and analysing.
Imagisme’ (the final ‘e’ was Pound’s attempt to give the word a French sound, after Symbolisme; it was quickly, and quietly, dropped) began in the British Museum tea-room in 1912, when Ezra Pound declared to his ex-girlfriend Hilda Doolittle and her new boyfriend Richard Aldington that they were both ‘Imagist poets’, and the co-founders of a new poetic movement. (Pound also suggested Doolittle sign her poems simply as ‘H. D.’.)
Pound begins ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’ by defining what he, and the Imagists, mean by the term ‘Image’: ‘that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.’ Imagism deals with the fleeing and the immediate, and carries both intellectual and emotional force.
The instantaneous presentation of the Image – Pound’s image of the commuters and the petals is divided only by a semi-colon, not by unnecessary words such as ‘as’ or ‘like’ – is designed to convey a sense of liberation, taking us outside of space and time for a moment. It’s as if everything has been paused, or slowed down as in some cinematic effect.

Ezra PoundPound then directs the reader to the three ‘tenets’ of Imagism which his fellow Imagist, the poet F. S. Flint, had advanced in a short essay, ‘Imagisme’, which appeared earlier in the same edition of Poetry magazine.
These three tenets or commandments can be boiled down to:

1) direct treatment of the ‘thing’, whether subjective or objective;

2) use no word that does not contribute to the presentation; and

3) in terms of rhythm, don’t write in regular metre (which is like the beating of a metronome) but in irregular rhythms (as in music).
In short: be direct, stick to the point, and write in free verse.

Pound says not to treat these guidelines as ‘dogma’ but rather as ‘the result of long contemplation’. All three of them are in part a reaction against the long-winded and derivative romantic poetry being produced in the early twentieth century.

The rest of Pound’s essay is divided into two sets of ‘don’ts’ or pieces of advice for Imagist poets: a set of don’ts about language, and some don’ts about rhythm and rhyme. For language, Pound echoes Flint’s guidelines that the poet should use no superfluous word: every word should contribute to the meaning of the poem, and unnecessary repetition is to be avoided.
On the issue of influence, Pound says that the poet should try to absorb the influence of as many great artists as he can, but either to acknowledge his or her debt to an artist, or ‘to try to conceal it’. In other words, nothing is worse than feeble imitation which half-sounds like a mediocre ‘cover version’ of a great work of art. Either make it obvious an image or phrase is ‘stolen’ or try to transform it into something.
In terms of rhythm and metre, we can analyse Pound’s position, or set of ‘don’ts’, as follows: foreign cadences are the best place for the poet to go to learn a new rhythm for verse, since they will be novel and different from the familiar English ones (iambic pentameter, ballad metre, and other such old favourites). Don’t be descriptive or ‘viewy’: present rather than describe.
In short, ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’ offered a bold break with much English poetic tradition, and helped modern poets to find a new ‘voice’ through turning to foreign poetry, writing in free verse, and writing in a clear, concise way using direct and memorable images.
As Pound said it even more succinctly elsewhere, ‘Make it new.’