Critical Analysis on Ezra Pound's "In the Station at the Metro"

Poem Analysis on Ezra Pound's “In the Station at the Metro”

By Maria Theresa C. Lanit

In a station of the metro

Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in a crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough

Affectivism (Reader-Response)

     The poem when read for the first time creates a lot of images in the mind of the reader. The title itself gives an image of a metro station full of people. The images Pound suggest in the title tells the reader that there may have been different kinds of people waiting for and disembarking station trains that just arrived at the station in a certain metro. An image of a noisy place is implicitly emphasize by Pound at the title

The poem itself is only consist of two lines but these two lines contain a lot of imagery. Pound mentions an apparition of faces in a crowd in the first line; the image of a crowd and the noise of this crowd is emphasized as well. The line creates a wonder as to why there are apparitions of faces and why these apparitions of faces are in a crowd of people in a metro station. First, it can be derived that these apparitions are something that Pound used to emphasis on the number of people that are moving fast inside the station, however, it cannot be concluded that these images indeed talks about that.

     The use of the word 'apparition' is quite mysterious in the first line because apparitions are usually an allusion to the supernatural and ghost-like figures. If that analysis is to be considered then the reader is lead to wonder why there are apparitions in a metro station full of people where an occurrence as such is unlikely. It could be that Pound wants to allude to the idea of death or dying in a crowd.

     In the next line, Pound introduces 'petals on a wet, black bough' which is another image though strong still creates a hint of wonder. The reader is given a contrast of images through the mention of the petals and the wet black bough; the contrast is from something supernatural to something natural. The addition of these images adds more wonder because it is another circumstance that is unlikely to happen in a metro station.

     From the images mentioned, the reader can derived a persona of a man who is sitting in the middle of a station full of hasty people who seem occupied with their daily routines observing the crowd of people, or perhaps, even waiting for something. The persona seems tired because he doesn't go along with the crowd of people, instead he chooses to sit and observed them as they move like apparitions in the crowd. The petals on the wet black bough is something that the persona has seen while sitting in a bench at the station and could symbolize a realization that the persona came into while in the metro. As to what the realization may be, it is not clear but it could be something about the life the persona has been living that seems to be in a mess such as that of the mess the crowd of people in the metro station creates. The bough could also symbolize an aspect of his life that fell apart and fell into a crowd and, eventually, into oblivion preventing his control over it.

Mimesis

     Pound's 'In the station at the metro' readily suggest the idea of a stirringly loud crowd who are clamoring in haste in the title. Pound introduces a persona who is in the middle of the this loud clamoring crowd silently observing the haste the it is making in the first line. As the persona describes about his observations, his description of “apparitions of faces in the crowd” coalesces with the idea that is presented in the title of the poem. The persona sees “apparition of faces” that is also associated with the idea in the of death and dying that is presented in the second line where he describes 'petals on a wet black bough'. “Petals” are represented as a symbols for death and dying for they are withered pieces of a flower; the same idea is also presented with the use of “bough” for it is withered part of the tree. When the persona sees the 'petals on a wet, black bough' while he is seeing 'apparitions of faces in a crowd' we are given an idea of the realization that dawn on him as he sits in a station at the metro.

     The images in the poem creates mental images in the mind that greatly affects the theme of the poem that which is about the transience of life. Its representation of the images that are seemingly natural are skillfully foreshadowed as death and dying.

Expressivism

     Ezra Pound was one of the proponents of Imagism which is a literary style that focus of the presentation of images through writing before he converted to another literary style. The poem 'In the station of the metro' Pound gives a sample of Imagism as he gives so many descriptions of images in few words, such as the lines 'apparitions of these faces in a crowd' and 'petals on a wet black bough'. Imagism usually focuses on the 'economy of language' which means the words used should be directly related to the image that one wants to create to it's reader's mind and not otherwise. It focus more on the presentation of the subject rather than the subject itself.

     In the poem 'In the station of the metro' that Pound wrote while in a metro station at La Concorde, Paris he could have come into a realization of how transitory life is like that of the trains that arrive and depart each hour at the station and the apparition-like faces of people in the crowd. In the last line where he tries to contrast the 'petals' which are usually depicted as soft and delicate to that of the 'black bough' which in contrast are depicted as rough and decayed Pound gives the reader descriptions of contrasting ideas in nature. Pound describes a 'wet (black) bough' which could suggest that while Pound was in the station a heavy rain occurred that broke the bough and thus, rendering it to fall to the ground. Pound is suggesting that the life is indeed transitory and that it is full of unprecedented and contrasting ideas that needs to be dealt with, regarding less.

Formalism

     As mentioned earlier, Pound's poem contains intense descriptions of nature. The title itself suggest images of hasty motion to the reader and from these descriptions in the title, the reader is given an idea of what the poem is about that which is how transitory life is. Metro stations are considered bustling places where people have to pass each day in order to get to their destination; this is one image directly suggested in the title. These images are further made clear in the succeeding lines as Pound further talks about 'apparition of faces in a crowd' which could be seen in two aspects. The line 'apparition of faces in a crowd' could mean that the crowd is moving rapidly making the persona who has been observing the crowd closely see them as mere apparitions. The use of the word 'apparition' also suggest an temporal idea of an existence of life which is the theme suggested in the poem.

     These temporal idea of existence is further played by Pound in the second line of the poem as he describes 'petals on a wet, black bough'. The use of the word 'petals' and 'bough' suggest the idea of falling and withering like that of a petal falling off from a flower or branch falling from a tree. The idea of a petal or a branch falling off from a flower or a tree (respectively) alludes to the idea of death or dying. These two images encourages the idea presented at the title of Pound's poem where he suggest a temporal idea of existence. The use of the word 'bough' as the last word is also note worthy for it suggest the fear the persona feels towards the idea of life, death and dying. The word 'bough' is another word for 'gallows' that means device used to execute criminals in the early centuries, and the use of it as the last word in the poem suggest the persona's impasse in the realization of temporal existence. Pound also uses 'wet' to describe the 'petals on a (wet) black bough' which suggest that it must have rained while the persona stayed at the station at the metro and it is because of this rain the bough fell. These brief and sharp descriptions of the 'bough' alone suggest incapability to prevent any bad circumstance that occurs in life.

     Pound uses the conciseness of images to suggest that life is indeed transient and that life no matter how one tries to elude it would always lead to one thing that which is death. Some critics suggest that the poem is an example of 'Memento Mori' (Latin - 'remember that you will die') and it could very well be. It could very well be a reminder to mortality.