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Abstract: The question of the relationship between the poet and the crowd is one of the possible perspectives of the study of literary sociology. In romanticism and modernism, which can be regarded as phenomena of one aesthetic “root”, the relationship of the poet and his non-poetic environment acquires an antithetical character. The avant-garde world attitude, at the first approach, implies the complete exclusion of the poet from the sphere of social relations. However, in fact, there is a relationship between aesthetics and pragmatics in the avant-garde concepts. The life area becomes the basis of life-creating experiments. The objective of this study is to identify the most significant perspectives of the relationship between the poet and society in futurism, imagism, expressionism. The development of the relationship between the poet and the crowd in futurism goes back to the romantic tradition and is based on the recognition of the exclusivity of the creative subject. The approach novelty to the character image is a statement of his physicality. The originality of futuristic practice lies in the fact that in its implementation the society and the crowd are not just the antipodes of a creative individual, but also the application area of his energy, the object of artistic creation. In the imagistic practice, ordinary people are given such characteristics as lack of individuality, elementary emotions, and correlation with the real world. The “dialogue” with the ordinary people is based on a cynical principle. The specificity of the relationship between the poet and the ordinary people becomes a continuation of their proclaimed poetics of non-distinction both within the literary text and in the life. The sociality of expressionism is controversial. Thus, the revolution is described in the texts of expressionists as a social project, realized outside the limits of their plans, in the life area, and not aesthetics. An expressionist only defines himself in relation to the events, which he did not initiate. The consideration of the issue of the relationship between the poet and society, thus, reveals three types of relations with the social reality created in the avant-garde practice: utopian in futurism, playful in imagism and emotional in expressionism. Only non-standard interpretation of social events brings them together. All discrepancies are included in the aesthetic area.