Concerning Pope’s first free work, the Essay on Criticism would probably give the imagists negative thoughts. In the excerpt, Pope utilized the meter, rhythm, and rhymes, which were considered outdated by the imagists. The imagists were influenced by modern trends in art, impressionism, surrealism, and futurism and acknowledged themselves as artists.
Therefore, imagists despised the limitations for poems imposed by historical contexts of social and religious norms of the Victorian era. Pope’s Essay on Criticism provides a negative suggestion that the lack of rhyme resulted in chaos, where the text does not fit. The excerpt also questions the art and craft of imagists, criticizing their lack of skills that result in inconsistent works with excessive thoughts in most parts of the text.
On the other hand, Ezra Pound was highly involved in the imagist movements, and most of his works could be acknowledged as rebellious acts against outdated standards imposed on poetry. For example, his work In a Station of the Metro presents a composition with only fourteen words. Another poem of Pound, The Garden, features the author’s unique approach towards rhythm in poetry, where he uses musical phrase sequence instead of metronome-based rhythm.
Even though another leader of the Imagists movement, Amy Lowell, criticized Pound’s extreme views on imagism, her poem Aliens also does not follow any specific rhythm. Therefore, the excerpt from Pope’s Essay on Criticism would most likely be disapproved by imagists due to the authors’ submission to limits and problems with Pope’s denial of imagist poets’ art.