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What were the three main principles of Imagism?

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Formulated around 1912 by Ezra Pound and his contemporaries, the Imagist movement sought to replace the sentimentality and "careless thinking" of the era with verse characterized by dry clarity and hard outlines.

The three core principles of Imagism are:

  • Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
  • To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
  • As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.1

These principles emphasized sparse, exact language, drawing inspiration from sculpture, ancient Greek lyric poetry, and Japanese haiku.12