Why Are These Poems So Short, eh?

Imagism, imagism, imagism. . . I always loved the week when we studied Imagism. The poems are so stinkin' small. I could blaze through my homework and feel accomplished that I had read ten poems in just ten minutes. Then I went to college and learned a few things about WHY these poems were so short.

Imagism was really the first official movement of Modernism at the beginning of the 20th century. It focused on the precision of imagery and extremely clear language. This was done no better than by Ezra Pound. Born in Hailey, Idaho, (anybody ever been to Hailey? Didn't think so.) Pound was one of the expatriates that lived in Britain and France after World War I who championed the Modernist movement of literature alongside Hemingway, H.D. and Eliot. Imagism was born from the idea that succinct language could isolate a single image and reveal its essence. This is plainly evident in Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro."

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. 

At first glance, the poem seems laughable. As Briggs said, the title is nearly as long as the entire poem. Nevertheless, the deep meaning of the poem and its image can be unlocked with a simple analysis and a bit of imagination. The clear juxtaposition of the two seemingly abstract images, faces in a crowd and petals on a black branch, entice the curious mind to search for a connection. . . and i promise there is one. Just close your eyes (after you read the post because how are you supposed to read if your eyes are closed, huh?) and try to picture the image. 

The title of the poem suggests that the faces in the crowd are emerging from a subway or metro. The wet bough also creates the image of a rainy day or dewy morning. Now, I don't know about you, but I imagine a crowd of people walking up the stairs from the metro, on their way to work some early, rainy morning in London or New York. Everyone is packed together and they move like a sea of black trench coats and bowler hats.

The grey cement walls that line the subway frame the ominous sea of black. Like a pink petal of a newly blossomed flower, the faces of these people emerge from the sea of black like flowers emerging from their soggy, black boughs. The essence of the image is captured and a vivid image is now branded onto my brain.

I feel like true beauty can be found in all things. The Imagists were just trying to unlock that potential beauty that had been buried beneath preconception and superficiality. By using sharp language and focusing on creating image, the Imagists dug out the essence and true beauty of ordinary images from beneath the 6 feet of metaphorical dirt. Beauty, therefore, could exist everywhere and in such simple things as faces in a crowd in the station of the metro.