The Station in a Metro Analysis
"In a Station of the Metro" is a short poem written by Ezra Pound in the year 1913. He
was known for including a lot of imagery in his writing. Even though "In a Station of the Metro"
is an extremely short piece, it includes imagery throughout all of it. In this poem he uses visual
imagery to be specific. The style that the author used in his writing is very formal and is pretty
straight forward with the message that he is trying to tell the audience. The poem is contrasting
classical and modern ideas through the representation of abstract ideals and concrete literal
ideals. Modernity should rise above classical ideals because man is more realistic than the idea of
gods.
A lot can be said about what the poem is going to be about from the title. In this case, the
poem is clearly going to be about something dealing with cities. The author uses three words in
his poem that stand out more than any other which are apparition, petals, and bough. First, the
word apparition means ghost figure. When you put it together with the rest of the sentence, "The
apparition of these faces in the crowd...", it creates this imagery and a strong sense of something
that is mystical and unexpected to be found. These faces that the author is referring to in his
poem is probably something that seemed out of place but at the same time he was mesmerized by
them. The apparition of the faces is unclear, leaving the sense of uncertainty, which supports the
idea that the poem is trying to show the classical period.
The second word, petal, is very important because it is used in the form of figurative
language. Petals are what gives flowers their beauty and in the poem he uses petals as symbolism
to represent the people he saw standing in the crowd in the station. Petals come in many different
sizes, shapes, and colors. The same is with human beings because we are all very diverse. The
author saw beauty in the crowd of people which further supports this idea of beauty existing in
unexpected places. We can connect the "apparition of these faces", to petals in the sense that
petals help describe the hidden message in that sentence. The word petal is figurative language
but it is an object; it is something literal which connects with the idea of modernity.
The third word is "bough", which can be more simply referred to as the main branch of a
tree. In the poem, the bough is described as being wet and dark which can also be symbolism that
the author chose to use. The wet, dark bough is trying to describe the way the city looks. There is
nothing very beautiful about it but Ezra does this on purpose which supports the idea that beauty
is found in unexpected places.
The first part of the sentence is explaining the classical period which includes subjective
ideas; the second part of the sentence contrasts it with modern ideas. This poem is arguing that
the modern period is better than the classical period. We should move into depending on man,
which we are able to see, instead of trusting the gods that cannot be proven to exist.