Comparative Studies on the Image Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire and E.E.Cummings

Under the influence of the avant-garde art movement in the early years of 20th century, French poet Guillaume Apollinaire and American poet E.E. Cummings both created a large number of image poems.The techniques of dismantling, reconstructing, and collage used in their works were obviously influenced by the cubism. Image poetry needs to motivate two different visual mechanisms of the readers, Lessing once pointed out that poetry and painting should be clearly defined, but the works by Apollinaire and Cummings are not simple character games, on the contrary, their literary value is also very high, which is mainly due to two aspects:the cubism emphasize interpretation and the works of the two poets did not give up the pursuit of the musicality and depth of poetry.