Imagism is the earliest school of modern poetry in the early 20th century. 1908- 1909 was formed in Britain, and was later introduced to the United States and the Soviet Union.
Imagist poetry especially emphasizes the role of images and intuition. At the same time, the symbolism poetry school created a new way for Imagist to create new poems, especially the synaesthesia, color and musicality of poems, which greatly inspired Imagist.
Because most imagist poets have experienced symbolic poetry creation, some people in the theoretical circle regard imagism as a branch of symbolism. In fact, imagist and symbolist poetry are very different in essence. Imagism is not satisfied with symbolism to find the metaphorical meaning and symbolic meaning behind the image by guessing, and is not satisfied with finding the mysterious relationship between the image and the thought, but to make poetry reflected in the description of the image in an instant. It advocates using vivid images to restrain feelings, not preaching, not abstract lyricism and unreasonable. Therefore, Imagist poetry is short, pithy and vivid. A poem often has only one image or several images. Although symbolism also uses images, both of which regard images as "objective counterparts", symbolism regards images as symbols and pays attention to association, suggestion and metaphor, making images into codes to be translated. Imagism, on the other hand, is "from symbolic symbols to the real world", focusing on the image itself of poetry, that is, concreteness. Let emotions and thoughts merge in the image, which is naturally reflected in an instant without thinking.