imagist meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

imagist

noun

Etymology From image + -ist.

Art, Arts A follower of any of the various artistic schools known as imagism

Most critics group Lanyon with the Chicago imagists, artists who use ordinary objects and meticulous detail to explore fantasy.1988 January 22, Holly Greenhagen, “Art Facts: Ellen Lanyon's magic art”, in Chicago Reader:
D. H. Lawrence would have been a poet of distinction without an imagist movement, but he became a modern poet, and a major one, by becoming an imagist, and in time he attained greater distinction than any of the other English poets who helped found the imagist movement.1996, William Pratt, Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry, page 162:

adj

Etymology From image + -ist.

Characteristic of or pertaining to imagism.

D. H. Lawrence would have been a poet of distinction without an imagist movement, but he became a modern poet, and a major one, by becoming an imagist, and in time he attained greater distinction than any of the other English poets who helped found the imagist movement.1996, William Pratt, Singing the Chaos: Madness and Wisdom in Modern Poetry, page 162:
Their advertisements rely wholly on memory, which is why they can be (indeed must be) less detailed, more imagist, more distinctive—more memorable.2008, Winston Fletcher, Powers of Persuasion:

1 more example

Altieri argues that 'Williams still locates affect in the rendering of a scene', which seems true of Williams's shorter, more imagist poems.2016, Mark Sandy, Romantic Presences in the Twentieth Century, page 48: