Imagist Poem: The Letter

For my imagist poem, I chose The Letter by Amy Lowell.

LITTLE cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor
Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the greater moon.

Imagism was a poetry movement in the early part of the 20th century that focused on the presentation of a precise image, free of unnecessary flourish and description to create a single accurate, evocative scene or picture. Comprised of mostly American and British poets, they created different anthologies of their work. In 1915, they published Some Imagist Poets, which is where I found this poem written by Amy Lowell, who was considered the unofficial leader of the movement at that time.

I thought this poem was interesting because while a lot of imagist poems are very concise (such as In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound), The Letter is longer and seems to stray a little from the imagist idea of a single image, yet still embodies the vivid imagery of the movement. The literal description of the poem is that of the letter which the speaker is writing to her "Beloved," whose "cramped words" are "like draggled fly's legs" and demonstrate the desperation and love with which she is writing. The reader can see the spindly letters which hastily cover the page, making use of all the blank space in an attempt to express all of the speaker's feelings.

The speaker asks the words she has written if they can capture the scene around her, the "flaring moon" and "blossoming hawthorns" and the "bare floor / spattered with moonlight" that she paces in the middle of the night, trying to come up with the right thing to say. In this way, Lowell successfully presents two images, that of the actual letter and that of the speaker writing the letter. There is a shift with the speaker's apostrophe (when the speaker breaks off to address a person who is not there or an abstract quality or idea) to her "Beloved" and the image returns to the letter and how she tries to squeeze "the want of you...into little inkdrops." I liked this because the poem simultaneously examines how words can express all that someone feels and experiences while being part of a poetry movement that relies on words to create an entire image.