In a Station of the Metro

"In A Station of the Metro" is an Imagist poem by Ezra Pound published in 1913 in the literary magazine Poetry.[1] In the poem,
Pound describes a moment in the underground metro station in Paris in 1912; Pound suggested that the faces of the individuals in the
metro were best put into a poem not with a description but with an "equation". Because of the treatment of the subject's appearance
by way of the poem's own visuality, it is considered a quintessentialImagist text.[2]

It is sometimes considered to be the first haiku written in English, though it lacks the traditional 3-line, 17-syllable structure of haiku.

The poem was reprinted in Pound's collection Lustra in 1917, and again in the 1926 anthology Personae: The Collected Poems of
Ezra Pound, which compiled his early pre-Hugh Selwyn Mauberleyworks.

Contents
The poem
Analysis
References
See also
Sources
External links

The poem
The poem contains only fourteen words (without a verb therein—
making it a good example of theverbless poetry form).[3] In a Station of the Metro
“
Pound was influential in the creation of Imagist poetry until he left the The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
movement to embrace Vorticism in 1914. Pound, though briefly, Petals on a wet, black bough.
embraced Imagism stating that it was an important step away from the
verbose style of Victorian literature and suggested that it "is the sort of ”
American stuff I can show here in Paris without its being ridiculed".[4]
"In a Station of the Metro" is an early work of Modernist poetry as it attempts to "break from the pentameter", incorporates the use of
visual spacing as a poetic device, and does not contain any verbs.[2] The work originally appeared with different spacing between the
groups of words. This can be found in the on-line version ofPoetry magazine for April 1913.

Analysis
The poem was first published in 1913 and is considered one of the leading poems of the Imagist tradition. Pound's process of deletion
from thirty lines[5] to only fourteen words typifies Imagism's focus on economy of language, precision of imagery and experimenting
with non-traditional verse forms. The poem is Pound’s written equivalent for the moment of revelation and intense emotion he felt at
the Metro at La Concorde, Paris.

The poem is essentially a set of images that have unexpected likeness and convey the rare emotion that Pound was experiencing at
that time. Arguably the heart of the poem is not the first line, nor the second, but the mental process that links the two together. "In a
poem of this sort," as Pound explained, "one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms
itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective."[6]
Like other modernist artists of the period, Pound found inspiration in Japanese art,
but the tendency was to re-make and to meld cultural styles rather than to copy
directly or slavishly. He may have been inspired by a Suzuki Harunobu print he
almost certainly saw in the British Library (Richard Aldington mentions the specific
prints he matched to verse), and probably attempted to write haiku-like verse during
this period.[7]

References
1. Axelrod, Steven Gould and Camille Roman, Thomas J. rTavisano.The
New Anthology of American Poetry: Traditions and Revolutions,
Beginnings to 1900.Rutgers University Press (2003) p.663
2. Barbarese, J.T. "Ezra Pound's Imagist Aesthetics: Lustra to Mauberley"
The Columbia history of American poetryColumbia University Press
(1993) pp.307-308
3. Hirsch, Edward 'A Poet's Glossary' Houghton Mi n,2014
4. Ayers, David. Modernsim: A Short Introduction. Blackwell (2004) p.2
5. "On "In a Station of the Metro" " (http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/po Richard Aldington posited that Pound
ets/m_r/pound/metro.htm). www.english.illinois.edu. may have been inspired by this
ukiyo-e print he saw in the British
6. Pound (1916) Gaudier-Brzeska, 103.
Library.
https://archive.org/details/gaudierbrzeska00pounrich
Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at
7. Video of a lecture discussing the importanceof Japanese culture to
Night, Suzuki Harunobu, 18th
Pound's early poetry (http://vimeo.com/arrowsmith/cosmopolitanism-and
century
-modernism), London University School of Advanced Study, March
2012.

Wall Street journal , Jan 7-8, 2017Page C14 review by Willard Spiegelman

See also
Verbless Poetry

Sources
Ezra Pound "Vorticism", in The Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1, 1914
The Cat Empire, "The Crowd", Nov/Dec, 2004

External links
Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois

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