Josh Knight on T. E. Hulme

T.E. Hulme died at the young age of 34 while fighting in WWI. At the time of his death his published “complete poetic works” consisted of only 5 short poems. However, today he is called the father of imagistic poetry and a pioneer of modernism. He is said to have had strongly influenced people such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. This is all do to his revolutionary school of thinking. T.E.’s style was fresh and new. No one had ever seen anything like it. T.E. hated and rejected Romanticism, and in 1909, with the publication of his poem Autumn, imagism was created. “Imagism was a movement in early 20th century Anglo-American poetry. It rejected romantic and sentimental Victorian traditions in favor of precision of imagery in clear, sharp language” (wikipedia.org). T.E.’s most famous poem is without a doubt Autumn.

A touch of cold in the Autumn night --

I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

In this poem, similar to others that he has written, T.E. goes through seven steps in seven lines. He first depicts the temperature and the time. To do this he states “A touch of cold in the Autumn night”. Next, with the statement “I walked abroad”, he describes what he is doing at the time. Then He states what he sees, “And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge”. Next he describes what he sees. In this case he describes the moon as being “Like a red-faced farmer. Fallowing this he describes his reaction or response with the statement “I did not stop to speak, but nodded”. He then states a second character or object that he sees and then describes it with an adjective. This is in the last two lines were T.E. states, “And round about were the wistful stars with white faces like town children.”

In the following poems of my own I have tried to mimic T.E.’s style of writing the best I could.

Warmth in the Cold

Winter's night but not so cold
I sat on the roof
Enormous flakes of snow slowly fell through the night
Like a kaleidoscope agents the black background of the sky
I lay there dreaming
The smoke rose from the chimneys around me
Like grey ghost rising into the night.

The Flu

A lonely sleepless night
I lay in bed
I feel my stomach squirm
Like a fish on the end of a line
I keep writing and try to ignore it
The lights shine so bright in my eyes
As if I were staring directly at the sun

Spelunking

Deep in the dark cave
We turn out our lights
The darkness rushes in
Like a consuming force one can feel
We say nothing
The silence has sound
As if all mighty God had spoke

North Africa

A warm café at midday
I sit alone sipping my coffee
The call to prayer screams out from the minarets
Singing like a Siren's Song
I crack open my book and begin to read
Men outside bow their faces to the ground
Like puppets on satins string

Joshua Knight

Book Review on Speculations by T. E. Hulme

Tomas Ernest Hulme was more than a just a poet; he was a theorist and a critic of modern art as well. This is made clear in the book entitled Speculations. This book, as in all most all works published by T.E., was published after his death in 1917. T.E. Hulme died at the young age of 34 while fighting in WWI. However, he left behind many notebooks and manuscripts and from these documents the book Speculations was compiled. This book was compiled from T.E.’s notes on modern theories of art, a general introduction to the philosophy of Bergson, a book on Jacob Epstein and the Esthetics of sculpture, a philosophy or Weltanschauung, in an allegorical form, and a series of pamphlets on anti-humanism, anti-romanticism, and pre-renaissance philosophy. For the sake of time and great boredom I have chosen to focus on only one of these topics.

T.E. Hulme was not a fan of Romanticism. He makes clear his belief that Romanticism limits poetry and that a classical revolution is about to take place during this time period. Hulme states that the root of all romanticism is that “man the individual is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive order then these possibilities will have a chance and you will get progress.”
Now to be honest that statement is a little too deep for me. Yet as one reads on T.E. begins to speak of the romanticism poets and how their school of thought limited them. He then demonstrates how a poet who observes the classical spirit can have a broader writing ability. However, a few pages later T.E. states that classical poetry is not poetry at all.

T.E. states that “at any period at any time, and individual poet may be a classic or a romantic just as he feels like it. You at any particular moment may think that you can stand outside a movement. You may think that as an individual you observe both the classic and the romantic spirit and decide from a purely detached point of view that one is superior to the other.” T.E. cannot seem to decide which viewpoint is better. He goes back and forth weighing out the positives and the negatives.

Through T.E. writings in Speculations one can see a debating going on in his own head over romanticism and classicism. It is out of this debate that T.E. finally gives up and develops Imagism. T.E. hated and rejected Romanticism, and dislike classicism as well. Therefore, in 1909, with the publication of his poem Autumn, imagism was created.