Blog Post 2 Topic 2 - Tara Saljooghi

Through Ezra Pound’s, “In a Station of the Metro”, the reader can gain insight from reading the title, his word choice, and the imagery. Imagism is a name given to a movement in poetry aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. Pound drew a lot on Chinese and Japanese poetry using ample imagery that as the readers, we are able to turn two lines into many different ideas.

First off, the title gives the reader the setting. What the reader doesn’t know is the location of the metro, which I found when googling the location, and it is a metro in Paris, France. Upon reading the first line, Pound uses the word “apparition” to give the sense that something is moving by quickly. He then follows this word with “these faces in the crowd” to give the sense that it is faces passing by quickly. Apparition means ghost or ghostlike image of a person, so with this word, the reader is able to imagine how fast theses faces are passing by—so fast that they are appearing like ghosts. This is a true statement as being in a metro station, everything goes by really quickly, there is a lot of movement and it is usually fast movement. We see one face and within the next second five more faces have walked in front of us. People are minding their own business, rushing to make their trains, the trains are moving at fast paces. As the reader, we are supposed to imagine being in the location and seeing these things actually happen. Ezra Pound does a good job of this because I do picture myself standing in the crowd of a metro station, and seeing glimpses of people’s faces as they walk by hurriedly in the crowd.   

The second line is even shorter, where pound solely writes, “Petals on a wet, black bough”. At first, this can be a bit confusing because we were just in a metro station and now we’re in nature. A bough is the main branch of a tree and a black bough can signify the darkness of this tree. These petals on a tree are giving life to the branch just like the faces are giving life to the metro station. This line is used as a metaphor connecting to the first line. Pound is relating the two through nature and how flowers give a branch life. Without people using a metro station, it would be a ghost-liked abandoned place. Without flowers on a black branch, the tree looks dull and dead-like. I think the adjective wet is used to describe a recent rainfall. The petals grow when there is rain, and so when there are petals growing, it gives life to the branch.

Overall, as the readers, we are able to a get a sense that Ezra Pound is part of the imagist movement through his descriptive word choice and metaphorical comparison of the two lines. His diction has allowed us to read the poem as if we are there, giving us the ability to imagine what is happening even though it is a very short poem.

Word Count: 527