In the following essay, Aldington and Lowell outline the central tenets of Imagism.

SOURCE: Preface to Some Imagist Poets, 1915: An Anthology, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915, pp. v-viii.

In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled Des Imagistes. It was a collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new movements in the arts, and has already become a household word. Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them along different paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume have therefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we have been joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the first volume, our wider scope making this possible.

In this new book we have followed a slightly different...