December 5, 2008
Des Imagistes, first Web edition
The students in my Comparative Media Studies Workshop have just shared their Web edition of the first anthology of Imagist poetry, edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914. Des Imagistes was not (as far as I could determine) previously available online, isn’t in print, and is not even very easily found in libraries. We don’t have a copy of it here at MIT, for instance.
The Web unit in our workshop is, I think, very necessary, but is probably the most 1.0 and boring of the things we do, which include writing creative programs in Processing and making music videos. At its best, though, it can be the opportunity to learn about general issues and methods in editorial and production as well as the specifics of Internet and Web technologies. I think this group certainly made the best of it.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
This is one beautiful piece of work. A justly famous avant garde work, hugely influential, now virtually (un)attainable. Hope it gets picked up by artists, critics, and general readers. =j=
December 7th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[…] source: Grand Text Auto […]
December 9th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Wow–this is not only going to be a fantastic resource for the classes I’m teaching on modernist poetry, but it’s a fantastic model for class projects. Very impressive!
December 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
When I run across this work mentioned, I can’t help but chuckling at the mixture of ire and embarrassment with which primary anthology contributor Richard Aldington mentioned its title in his later works—he liked the anthologizing of the imagists, but disliked the “ridiculous ensign” under which their first published work appeared. He even suggests that Pound might not have actually known what the phrase meant in French, or that it was ungrammatical, but chose it since he “liked foreign titles”.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
[…] prefer the look and feel of an old book, it is also available in convenient 21mb PDF format. via Grand Text Auto. The quote in this post’s title is from an amusing anecdote related on the anthology’s wikipedia […]
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:30 am
[…] Montford of Grand Text Auto unveils his students’ beautiful new Web edition of the first anthology of Imagist poetry, edited by […]
February 15th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
[…] Grand Text Auto has more information from Montfort himself. […]