100 CHINESE POETRY AND ITS CONNOTATIONS 



It is not here that the merits and demerits of the now- 

 well established "Imagist" movement in modern poetry can 

 be discussed, but the similarity between the methods of 

 the Chinese poets and that of their descendants, the 

 "Imagists" of to-day, is interesting to note. . Miss Lowell, 

 one of the leaders of the modern movement in poetry 

 writes : — 



"If I were obliged to define the dominant characteristic of this 

 idiom (that of the poetry of to-day) in a word I should say it was 

 'suggestion.' The invoking of a place or character rather than des- 

 cribing it. 5 ' 



And further: — 



"In short poems, suggestion can be carried to the extreme, as there 

 is no danger of the reader losing the thread ; in longer poems definite' 

 statement has to be more frequently employed, so as to keep the current 

 of the poem constantly before the reader ; but even here, attentive 

 students will find a very different attitude from that of the older poets 

 — they told stories — we do not tell stories, we throw pictures on a 

 screen, but we ourselves remain in the dark." 



No words could describe more exactly Chinese poetry, 

 while the following poem, by Miss Lowell, is an excellent 

 example of the similarity of method referred to: — 



Nostalgia 



"Through pleasures and palaces"— 



Through hotels and Pullman cars, and steamships . . . 



Pink and white camellias floating in a crystal bowl, 

 The sharp smell of firewood, 



The scrape and rustle of a dog stretching himself on a 

 hardwood floor, 



And your voice, reading reading to the slow ticking 



" of an old brass clock ... 



"Tickets please !" 

 And I watch the man in front of me 

 Fumbling in fourteen pockets, 

 While the conductor balances his ticket-punch 

 Between his fingers. 



Can the art of connotation be more perfectly applied? 

 There is not one of us to whom "Home Sweet Home" is 

 unfamiliar, in a mental flash we conclude the stanza suggest- 

 ed by the first line, while the second brings vivid pictures of 

 all the experiences of American travel, — of rushing trains, 

 plush covered seats, negro porters in blue -grey suits— of 

 marble-floored hotel entrances, weary "clerks" and hurrying 

 "bell-boys"; and who, that knows America, can fail to 

 recognize the room which floats before the eyes of the writer? 



