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Analysis of “In a Station of the Metro”

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black

bough.” The two-line poem “In a Station of the Metro”, which is only 14

words in all, is the most famous work by American writer Ezra Pound. In

the poem, Pound describes a moment in the underground metro station in

Paris in 1912. This imagery poem manages to vividly evoke both a

crowded subway station and petals on a tree branch without including a

single verb.

The theme of this poem is hazy, and the author may have simply

captured a lens in life here. 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.

For example, the word “apparition” in the first line suggests the nature of

traveling in a crowd — it is a fleeting action, so much so that people seem

like ghosts to the observer. In one moment, there is a face, as clear as can

be, and in the next, it is gone, and likely will never be remembered by the

mind. They are apparitions, in one place for one moment, and then gone

forever in the next. And in the following image, the observer views

“petals on a wet, black bough.” In this image, the reader is presented with

the idea of small, fleeting, and weak elements of beauty within the natural

world. The overall tone of the subway station is black, the lighting is
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dark, and people's clothes are serious. But suddenly the “petals” occurred,

which may refer to the beautiful face of a child or woman whom he

happened to see in the station. And it is the appearance of the beautiful

faces that adds some bright color to the dull picture in the station. The

two juxtaposed images reflect into the brain of the readers, forming a

strong contrast between the vulgar and beautiful, damp and fresh

paintings. Ezra Pound once defined an image as “an intellectual and

emotional complex in an instant of time”, and this is exactly what this

poem offers. It is difficult to describe the feeling of appreciation of a

transient natural phenomenon, but by paring these images together,

readers can easily conjure up such pictures in our mind and feel the

author's state of mind, which is an unusual emotion, one that does not

have a correlating word in the English Dictionary.

This poem reminds me of an imagery Chinese ancient poem “Autumn

Thoughts” by Ma Zhiyuan. Nine images in this poem form a wonderful

picture of late autumn. In both “In a Station of the Metro” and “Autumn

Thoughts”, colors blend with words. Pound's work is like western oil

painting, with dim backgrounds and distinct objects. Words in the poem

act as pigments: the “petals” stands for the color itself; “wet” implies a

feeling of freshness and brightness; “apparition” gives the face and petals

a pale, feebly hazy hue; the juxtaposition of "petals" and "faces" gives the

face a soft, ruddy hue. The contrast of colors just highlights the surprise
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when those beautiful faces appear. On the other hand, “Autumn

Thoughts” is like a traditional Chinese ink painting. In Ma's sketches of

autumn, “rotten vines”, “old trees” and “evening crows” present a gray

picture, while “the sun” adds a beam of golden to the scene mentioned

above. When we read these two poems, what comes to mind is not words,

but a moving picture carefully drawn by the poets.