I require you to revise this paper. It is not extensive; you simply need to follow the corrections outlined by my professor below .
Dear Chidera:
I have read the draft of your Imagism essay. It is articulate and ambitious, with plenty of scholarly research. Formatting is excellent. It is also more than long enough, so you could make cuts.
Judging from the intro, the thesis or main focus is to weigh Pound’s Imagism against Amy Lowell’s, which Pound famously denounced as “Amygism.” You then say something seemingly crucial but it comes out in a fragment which I struggle to attribute to either Lowell or Pound, “tackling the imbalance between subjectivity and empiricism in modernism by adopting a more open attitude.” I guess I can assume that Amy Lowell, being the more romantic, is also the more subjective, while Pound in Imagism mode announced a form of “objectivity” (though he did include “subjective things”). Setting aside that “empiricism” oversimplifies the Poundian image defined as an “intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time,” I can see why one might call Pound objective broadly speaking, and relative to Lowell.
However, as we proceed through the essay, it is a struggle to keep the thesis in view. This struggle arises partly from the absence of substantial, full-sentence transitions to start each paragraph. Instead, you rely on single word or phrase transitions that are more suitable to transitioning from one sentence to the next, rather than across paragraphs. There is also motif of “zooming out” from the main term Imagism, and feeling like you have to keep redefining it even after many definitions earlier.
The redefinition of key terminology here takes up space that could be filled with textual analysis of poems at a detailed, line-by-line level. You cite often but do almost no quoting from either primary or secondary sources. Much more details in support, and a more patient progress from idea to text and back to idea would help to ground your argument in interpretive reading.
Also, be careful about slippages like calling “Imagism” “Impressionism,” or using “he” for Amy Lowell. One of your secondary sources listed is about Robert Lowell—a distant relation but definitely not the same poet as Amy and not an Imagist–, while another is on Rossetti, both of which seemed irrelevant to your argument.
Also, I found it curious that you only brought up H.D. on page seven and did not mention her in intro or conclusion.
With a tighter and more consistent focus on articulating / supporting your thesis, and with a lot more textual analysis, this could be a successful essay. Certainly, Amy Lowell deserves more attention and comparing the second and third phases of Imagism (the first phase was captained by T.E. Hulme) is a worthwhile critical pursuit.
Best regards,
