“Acmeism” is a school of Russian poetry which emerged in 1910. Its members generally prized direct expression, clarity, and compact poetic structures. Its closest contemporary Western analogue is most likely the “Imagist” approach formulated by H.D. and Ezra Pound.
“Zaum” is an extreme manifestation of the Russian Futurist aesthetic the practitioners of which were dedicated to experiments with form, meaning and sound in poetry (not necessarily in this order). The phrase was coined by Aleksey Kruchenykh in 1913’s “Declaration of the Word as Such”, was often used in relation to the work of more experimental Futurists such as Velimir Khlebnikov, and was still in use during the late 1920’s and the 1930’s when the torch of avant-garde novelty was passed to Daniil Kharms and the members of his OBERIU collective. “Zaumists” were overtly avant-garde, produced poetry often defined as “absurdist”, “surreal”, or “nonsensical”, and were driven towards explorations of the possibilities of sound and language as well as of its liberation from cultural norms, clichés, and tropes. The latter goal often necessitated the poets to dispose of regular notions of “meaning” and any traditional poetic aspects whatsoevers .
“Imaginism”: A movement founded shortly after the October Revolution as a continuation of the “Ego-Futurist” group (who, in contrast with the “Cubo-Futurist” philosophies, strove for a Futurism with a more subjective and personal focus) by Sergei Esenin, Anatoly Marienhof, and Vadim Shershenevich. “Imaginists” proclaimed the precedence of “the image” (whether in a compact or more verbose formulation) and often had it as their goal to paint transfixing and exotic images with their words while acknowledging the value of a poet’s emotional/experiential microcosms and subjective symbol system.
“OBERIU” (A Russian acronym for “Union of Real Art”): A Russian Futurist collective functioning in the 1930’s and 1940’s, having been founded by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky as a direct continuation of former avant-garde movements (which were by-then quickly organically fizzling out or being stomped out by official Soviet “culture police”). The most direct precedent of the “OBERIUTS” (as they called themselves) is the “Zaum” movement. The “OBERIUTS” consciously strove to counterpoise themselves to the culture of Socialist Realism by embracing Absurdism, Surrealism, nonsense verse and putting on deliberately provocative performance art pieces. Many of the “OBERIUTS” also wrote children’s stories and verse, which proved to be an effective way to make a living while not straying too far from their aesthetic proclivities. A major Anthology of their work was released under the title of “Archimedes’ Bath”.