Stephen Crane referred to his poetry as "lines" rather than poems. He did not consider it poetry, as the poetry of the time was mainly metered and rhymed. His lines draw heavily on allegory, most of them snippets of some universal aspect of existence. While he may not have been the founder of the style, Crane is considered one of the earliest American imagist poets in the style. Imagist poems use clear descriptions of real situations and things, rather than figurative language. This book comprises The Black Riders (1895) and War is Kind (1899), Crane's two collections of lines.