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In the early part of the 20th century, a group of poets who were well respected in America were called Imagists after the French title "Des Imagistes" of their first anthology. This group included H. D., Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams. Amy Lowell (in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry [1917]) said that the group's aims were to (1) use the exact word, but in the language of common speech; (2) to avoid cliches; (3) to express new moods with new rhythms; (4) to allow free choice of subject; (5) to show an image; (6) to be succinct, concentrate ideas; (7) to hint without telling through complete statements. Their work was said to be modeled after the Japanese Haiku with its single effect.

One famous poem, said to be an essential statement of this type of poetry, is William Carlos William's "The Red Wheelbarrow," which begins

So much depends
upon
a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

You see a simple image, a quiet scene, two colors all concentrated into one impression with as many implications as you can bring to the scene. This is imagistic poetry.