The imagist movement included both American and English poets, and germinated in the early 1900s when British critic and poet T.E. Hulme spoke out against the vague and romantic language of the poetry of his time. Like-minded poets such as Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle and Amy Lowell took up the clarion call for a new kind of poetic movement that used precise visual images to establish clarity in a reader's mind. The group's manifesto included the use of common, exact language, free verse, freedom of subject matter and poetry that was clear and understandable.
Using the tenets of imagism, Amy Lowell imbued her poetry with simple but rich imagery and a focus on rhythmic fluency. In order to remove boundaries from the poetic form, she developed a polyphonic prose style, in which she wrote out her poems in both formal and free-verse prose form but intended them to be read aloud to retain their poetic rhythm. Lowell wanted to duplicate the sound and feeling of great oratory, believing that poetry was most effective when expressed in spoken form. She used simple, exact language in prose style to create a specific image or setting in the reader's mind. An example is found in her 1914 poem "The Bombardment," in which she describes a city under siege: "Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again!"
With her deep commitment to the principles of the imagist movement, Lowell believed that generating publicity for poets was even more important than the poems themselves. Her enthusiasm for the business side of selling poetry to the country created conflict between her and Ezra Pound, a leading poetry critic and significant adherent of imagism. Pound was not supportive of what he felt was Powell's pandering to the masses and thought her poetry was mass-marketed and self-promoting. After Lowell used her wealth and connections to publish a collection of imagist poetry in 1915, Pound left the imagist movement, which he subsequently denigrated as "Amygism."
Though Amy Lowell was an active poet for only 12 years, she authored 650 poems and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for an anthology titled "What's O'Clock" in 1926, the year after her death. In addition to "A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass," Lowell published collections that included "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed" (1914), "Men, Women and Ghosts" (1916), "Pictures of the Floating World" (1919), "Legends" (1921) and a biography of English poet John Keats (1925).