In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro

by Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound, undated passport photograph, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Image ID 1023480.

That’s it. “In a Station of the Metro” has only fourteen words in two lines. Why? Ezra Pound was an expatriate American Modernist poet who is considered one of the leading Imagist poets.

In his notes on the poem, he explains, “In a poem of this sort, one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective” (Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir by Ezra Pound, p. 153).

You will encounter Ezra Pound in American Literature Module 3.9.

Modernism and Experimentation: 1914-1945 — Outline of American Literature Chapter 6