"In a Station of the Metro"
By Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The poem "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound, written in 1913, is a prime example of Imagist poetry which focuses on using simple and precise language to create striking images in the reader's mind. It is considered to be Pounds' most popular work. The poem is just two lines long, so it's hard to speculate who the speaker might be—maybe it's Pound himself, or someone else entirely.
The first line ends with a colon, which makes you pause for a moment before reading the second line. This pause gives extra emphasis to the images in the poem. It talks about a "wet, black bough," which creates a strong contrast with the gentle petals described later. This contrast highlights how beauty can be fleeting, just like life itself.
Pound wrote the poem in Paris, where he was living at the time. He was inspired by the sight of faces in a crowded metro station. The subject of the poem is about the sudden appearance of faces in a busy metro station, and Pound uses two main techniques to bring this scene to life: metaphor and imagery. By comparing the faces to petals on a wet, black bough, he shows how beautiful and temporary life can be. The metaphor also adds a sense of mystery to the poem because it's up to the reader to imagine what the rest of the scene might look like.
The poem is overall significant to the Imagist movement because it exemplifies the use of precise and concrete language to create vivid and immediate images. Especially with this poem only being two lines and a mere total of fourteen words, its impact lies in its ability to convey complex ideas through the use of simple yet powerful imagery.
Works Cited:
Academy of American Poets. "Ezra Pound." Poets.org, https://poets.org/poet/ezra-pound. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023.
Pound, Ezra. "In a Station of the Metro." Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53703/in-a-station-of-the-metro. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023.
Poetry Foundation. "Imagism." Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/imagism. Accessed 15 Apr. 2023.
Pound, Ezra. "Vorticism." Fortnightly Review, vol. 96, no. 573, Sept. 1914, pp. 534-538.