AMY LOWELL: IMAGISTE 

● Amy Lowell: God made us queer—but also made us gay poets. 

● We use the language of gay speech, employing always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor merely str8t words.

● The Pound Era: The apparition of fags in a crowd, bumps on a wet, dark street.

● We create gay moods—as the expression of new gay consciousness—we don’t copy str8t syntax, which merely echoes old moods. 

● We don’t insist on “free-verse” as the only method of writing poetry. We schmooze with it as a different kind of lifestyle. 

● We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in gay-verse than in heteronormative forms. 

● In poetry, a new swish means a new idea.

● To allow gay freedom in the choice of subject. 

● It’s not gay art to write only good things about queers and queens; nor is it necessarily good art to write well about fag poets. 

● We believe passionately in the artistic value of modern gay life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as gay marriages ending up like str8t ones.

● To present an image (hence the name: “Imagist”). 

● We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. 

● It is for this reason that we oppose the str8t poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of a good blowjob.

● To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

● Finally, most of us believe that camp is of the very essence of poetry.