Acmeist poetry

{{Short description|School of poetry in early 20th-century Russia}} '''Acmeism''', or the '''Guild of Poets''', was a modernist transient poetic school, which emerged {{circa|1911}}<ref name="Baldick">{{cite encyclopedia |surname=Baldick |given=Chris |authorlink=Chris Baldick |entry=Acmeism |title=The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms |edition=4th |format=Online Version |year=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191783234 |entry-url= https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198715443.001.0001/acref-9780198715443-e-9?rskey=0BwNgj&result=10 |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198715443.001.0001/acref-9780198715443 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> or in 1912 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky.<ref name="Greene">{{cite encyclopedia |surname=Painter |given=K. |editor-surname=Greene |editor-given=Roland |editor-link=Roland Greene |display-editors=etal |entry=Acmeism |title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics |edition=4th rev. |year=2012 |pages=5–6 |entry-url={{Google books|id=uKiC6IeFR2UC|plainurl=y|page=5|keywords=|text=}} |url={{Google books|id=uKiC6IeFR2UC|plainurl=y}} |place=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-15491-6}}</ref><ref name="Merriam">{{cite encyclopedia |entry=Acmeist |title=Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature |year=1995 |place=Springfield, Ma |publisher=Merriam-Webster |page=9 |entry-url={{Google books|id=eKNK1YwHcQ4C|plainurl=y|page=9|keywords=|text=}} |url={{Google books|id=eKNK1YwHcQ4C|plainurl=y}} |isbn=0-87779-042-6}}</ref> Their ideals were compactness of form and clarity of expression.<ref>Poem for the Day, Two, The Nicholas Albery Foundation, Chatto and Windus, London {{ISBN|0-7011-7401-3}}</ref> The term was coined after the Greek word ἀκμή (''akmē''), i.e., "the best age of man". == History == The acmeist mood was first announced by Mikhail Kuzmin in his 1910 essay "Concerning Beautiful Clarity". The acmeists contrasted the ideal of Apollonian clarity (hence the name of their journal, ''Apollon''<ref name="Merriam" /><ref name=Cuddon>{{cite encyclopedia |surname=Cuddon |given=J.A. |authorlink=J.A. Cuddon |editor=C.E. Preston |title=A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory |edition=4th rev. |year=1998 |place=Oxford |publisher=Blackwell |isbn=0-631-20271-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dictionaryoflite00cudd_0/page/7 7] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryoflite00cudd_0/mode/1up}}</ref>) to "Dionysian frenzy" propagated by the Russian symbolist poets like Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov. To the Symbolists' preoccupation with "intimations through symbols" they preferred "direct expression through images".<ref>{{cite book |editor-surname=Willhardt |editor-given=Mark |editor-surname2=Parker |editor-given2=Alan Michael |title=Who's Who in Twentieth Century World Poetry |series=Who's Who Series |place=London |publisher=Routledge |year=2001 |page=8 |isbn=0-415-16355-2 |doi=10.4324/9780203991992 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203991992/twentieth-century-world-poetry-andrew-motion-poet-laureate-alan-parker-mark-willhardt}}</ref>

In his later manifesto "The Morning of Acmeism" (1913), Osip Mandelstam defined the movement as "a yearning for world culture". As a "neo-classical form of modernism", which essentialized "poetic craft and cultural continuity", the Guild of Poets placed Alexander Pope, Théophile Gautier, Rudyard Kipling, Innokentiy Annensky, and the Parnassian poets among their predecessors.<ref>{{cite book |surname=Wachtel |given=Michael |title=The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Poetry |series=Cambridge Introductions to Literature |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2004 |page=8 |isbn=0-521-00493-4 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-introduction-to-russian-poetry/723947054543E2008A58BC019D2F9CC1 |url-access=registration}}</ref> == Major poets ==

Major poets in this school include Osip Mandelstam, Nikolay Gumilev, Mikhail Kuzmin, Anna Akhmatova, and Georgiy Ivanov. The group originally met in The Stray Dog Cafe, St. Petersburg, then a celebrated meeting place for artists and writers. Mandelstam's collection of poems ''Stone'' (1912) is considered the movement's finest accomplishment. == Variations in style==

Amongst the major acmeist poets, each interpreted acmeism in a different stylistic light, from Akhmatova's intimate poems on topics of love and relationships to Gumilev's narrative verse.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5644|title=poets.org|first=Academy of American|last=Poets|website=poets.org|access-date=26 April 2018|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140406232748/http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5644|archive-date=2014-04-06}}</ref>

== See also == * Tagantsev conspiracy * Imaginism * Imagism * Symbolism (arts)

== References == {{Reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Acmeist Poetry}} Category:Russian poetry Category:Literary movements Category:Poets' guilds Category:Russian literary movements Category:1910 introductions Category:20th-century literature Category:20th-century Russian literature