"In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound, the founder of imagism, was born in Hailey, Idaho, on October 30th, 1885 (Flory 308). Growing up in Philadelphia, Ezra Pound knew at fifteen what he wanted to do; he wanted to become a poet ("How"). In additon to his writings, he defriended and assisited many of the greatest writers of his time with their careers: T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway (Flory 308). In 1913, he published Contemprania, a group of imagistic poems that included the popular "In a Station of the Metro," stripping away his formerly archaic vocabulary and simplifying his verses (Flory 315). In Des Imagistes, an thology of imagistice poems, Pound emphasized that imagists were committed to the direct treatment of the image whether it is subjective or objective (Alexander 280). Using brevity and exact words, "In a Station of the Metro" reveals an epiphany and presents an unusual connection to our own experiences.

The poem is written in haiku, a Japanese poetic form with approximately seventeen syllables. In three lines, Pound presents a series of images: the metro station, the apparition, the faces in the crow, and the petals on wet, black bough ("Metro"). The title, "In a Stationof the Metro," gives the reader the expectation that the poem is about city life, bustling with people and certain indifferences that are typical in the city (1). The word "apparition" endow the mystical qualities to "these faces in the crowd," preparing the reader for the second line (2). The sudden image of "petals on a wet, black bough" starles the reader because we do no expect such beauty in a mundane city metro station (3).

An image is produced by the sensations that are caused by the perception ...

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... Detroit: Gale, 1988. 107 vols.

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---. "In a Station of the Metro." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 6th ed. New York: Harper, 1995. 660.

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