In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.
The title is nearly as long as the poem itself. My first observation.
Man I really wanted that to be my whole post! But I guess I will not to indulge my whimsy to that degree. I spent 2 hours doing reading poetry today and this one stuck out to me. There appears to be a strong connection between this poem and the traditional haiku. The juxtaposition of two contrasting images creating a metaphor suggest they hearken back to similar custom. Petals are made all the more beautiful when placed against a dark tree branch. Are the people made more radiant in the cold greyness of the metro? There is a half rhyme between crowd and bough which differs from the haiku form. There are nineteen syllables as opposed to a haiku's conventional seventeen. There are also only two lines instead of the normal three. There is even iambic meter! What is Pound getting at here? Perhaps there is order in disorder? Perhaps it is that beauty can be found in life's most mundane activities. Maybe man should be more closely associated with nature instead of a dark dreary tunnel. Could it be that man is most beautiful when he is organized in structured society? I do not feel like I know enough about Pound to make a concrete assertion, but since I do know that he was a Mussolinian supporter I will argue that my last point makes the most sense. Anyone have other ideas to offer?
What I do know about Pound was that he was an Imagist. They focused on creating poetry that was as concise as possible in order to produce a vivid image. Every word in the poem is, therefore, necessary. The obvious image of this poem is that of people emerging from a dreary, rainy subway. The metaphor of the petals on the wet, black bough is similar to that of pink faces in the midst of dark rain coats and cement walls.
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