The ideogrammic method was a technique expounded by

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

which allowed

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

to deal with abstract content through concrete images. The idea was based on Pound's reading of the work of Ernest Fenollosa, especially ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry'', composed by Fenollosa but edited by Pound after the author's death, 1908. Pound gives a brief account of it in his book '' The ABC of Reading'' (1934). He explains his understanding of the way

Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...

s were formed, with the example of the character 'East' (東) being essentially a superposition of the characters for 'tree' (木) and 'sun' (日); that is, a picture of the sun tangled in a tree's branches, suggesting a sunrise (which occurs in the East). He then suggests how, with such a system where concepts are built up from concrete instances, the (abstract) concept of 'red' might be presented by putting together the (concrete) pictures of: This was a key idea in the development of

Imagism Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has been termed "a successi ...

References and further reading

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References

Poetics Ezra Pound Imagism {{Poetry-stub

References and further reading

See also

References