Poetry Break: Imagism

A City Sunset

Alluring, Earth seducing, with high conceits
is the sunset that reigns
at the end of westward streets...
A sudden flaring sky
troubling strangely the passer by
with visions, alien to long streets, of Cytherea
or the smooth flesh of Lady Castlemaine...
A frolic of crimson
is the spreading glory of the sky,
heaven's jocund maid
flaunting a trailed red robe
along the fretted city roofs
about the time of homeward going crowds
—a vain maid, lingering, loth to go...


Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about were wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

T.E. Hulme (1909)

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"The metaphor and the adjective are nuisance stumbling blocks to perception."

-- Edward Dahlberg, writing about Ezra Pound in a review of The Letters of Ezra Pound for Tomorrow 1951; reprinted in Samuel Beckett's Wake and Other Uncollected Prose, ed. Steven Moore.


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