Imagist poetry is a literary movement initiated and put into practice by some British and American poets from 1909 to 19 17. It was a branch of symbolism literature movement prevailing in the western world at that time. From the Book of Changes, Zhuangzi, The Book of Songs and Li Sao to Wen Xin Diao Long, Tang poetry and Tang and Song poetry, the image theory has experienced a long development process in theory and practice. At the beginning of the 20th century, under the rich, implicit and vivid influence of French symbolism and China's classical poetry images, some writers and critics, represented by American poets Pound and Amy Lowell, English poets Thomas Hume and richard aldington, started a poetry movement against abstract preaching and outdated themes and expressions. 19 12, pound adopted the name of Imagist for the first time. During the period of1915 ~1917, a collection of imagist poems was published every year. After Pound quit Imagism, Lowell continued to lead the activities of Imagism, and put forward six principles, namely, language should be popular and accurate, new rhythms should be created, themes should be completely free, poems should be written with images, and expressions should be concrete, concise and centralized. Later, Lowell added the principle of "be subtle, not straightforward". Their efforts to oppose1the stale English poetry style in the late 9th century with vivid images and short and pithy "Chinese-style" poetry style are of positive significance, but they pay attention to the form and skills of poetry and often ignore the social significance and ideological value of their works. After World War I, Imagist poets gradually parted ways, and this school gradually disintegrated.

Around the October Revolution, Imagism was introduced to Russia, and the first batch of young poets and painters such as Ye Saining published the Imagism Declaration, formed a group and published Imagism magazines and poetry collections. The group was dissolved on 1927. In 1930s, British critic Caroline Sperzin published The Image of Shakespeare, which made a lot of research on the images in Shakespeare's plays and became the pioneer of imagism in Shakespeare's criticism. From the 1940s to the 1960s, new schools of poetry, such as image metaphysics represented by carl shapiro and John Malcolm and deep imagism represented by james wright and Louis Simpson, appeared in American poetry, indicating that imagism had a great influence on American poetry. Like many schools in western literary and art circles at the beginning of this century, Imagism was abandoned in a short time. Instead, vortex theory came into being, but as an idea, vortex theory has little sympathy and weak influence. The creation of vortex school focuses on expressing strength rather than displaying image. Pound and the supporters of vortex theory ran a magazine Elast during the period of1914-1915. In his creation, he also followed some viewpoints of the Vortex School.

The aim of Imagism is to ask poets to express things vividly with vivid, accurate, implicit and highly concentrated images, and to integrate the poet's instantaneous thoughts and feelings into poetry. It opposes comments and sighs. During his stay in London, Pound established a salon with HildaDoolittle and RichardAldington, which was supported by many people, including D.H. Law-Lawrence and WilliamCarlosWilliams. Imagism was founded in 1902. Pound once edited TheEgoist, an imagist publication, and in 19 13 he edited the first collection of imagist poems.

Imagism has no specific theory, but it has its own aesthetic thought, which can be roughly summarized as follows: using ordinary language, but using accurate words; Avoid poems and idioms that have sounds or are inadvertently used for decoration; Free choice of materials; Create new rhythms to express new emotions; Use images to present concrete, firm and affirmative pictures; Implied meaning, not directly expressed. Modern schools of British and American poetry. Image is an objective image with subjective feelings and an inherent concept in China's classical literary theory.