Expressionism is a twentieth-century writing style rejecting more symbolic styles to express personal truths. Generally a rhetorical, or even dooms day like style attempting to illuminate the fears and desires commonly held by all peoples. The movement, best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period, drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche. Schnack, Heym, Benn, Lasker-Schüler, Becher, Stadler, Werfel, and Stramm are its most characteristic advocates, though Trakl is the best known to English readers.
Impressionism is born of the nineteenth-century Paris-based art movement using vivid wording and symbolic phrasing to convey the poets own personal affect and interpretation of an event. It includes many catagories, Symbolism beying the most prominate sub-genre. Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Laforgue and Verlaine should be noted as it's more influential artists of the style.
So in short, impressionist are hippies, using symbolic words to talk about how they see something, expressionist are... I don't know, I suppose Jewish, maybe Austrian. But more likely, Austrian-Jew, using language which isn't symbolic to illuminate truths of life that we all share.
This post was edited by DaCapoAlCoda on Mar 1 2015 01:21am