Celebrating Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”

If you happened to be unfortunate and vain enough to have a certain kind of affection towards poetry, then you probably know that there’s a trick that makes all things tick the right way. The trick is — there’s no such thing as “poetry” in a strict scientific sense.

The reason for that is eerie simple — poetry as a concept is beyond any definitive description. It is more of a notion than anything specific.

Sure, there is more or less tolerable academic definition of poetry. It says: “type of literary art that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to mean more than it normally would”. But it can be associated with practically anything and that doesn’t really helps the cause.

Which brings us to the subject of the text.

***

If there is a poem that can perfectly show the sacramental “what is poetry?” it is probably Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”. It is a kind of poem that shows the possibilities of the concept without doing much.

To put it simple — “In a Station of the Metro” is deep, down and dirty opus that gets behind the readers back and pushes them into the abyss of imagery while pretending to be sky to be looked upon with a definitive gaze.

All you get is glimpses. Images, words, some background — all mixed in a liquid mindflow.

No guiding arrows are attached. You need to fill inthe blanks by yourself. Then, after a while, magic happens. It grows on you. It adds up. Those glimpses get the space inside your head. Poetry happens.

***

The backstory of “In a Station of the Metro” is fascinating. In 1911 Pound had an intense experience (or apparition as he himself called it) at La Concorde. The sudden emotion that he felt while gazing through the sea of faces showed him “something completely different”.

It was “je ne sais quoi” he was looking for since he started writing poetry years ago. He thought he can express it immediately but the resulting poem was unsatisfying mess as was the next attempt six months later. He couldn’t handle it properly.

It was only a full year later, in 1912, after he studied the works of Vasily Kandinsky, he found the right way to do it. In his own words, Pound tried to record “the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself”.

And he did in 20 words including the title.

***

Here’s how “In a Station of the Metro” works.

First, let’s look at the poem itself:

The title sets the scene. Gives you everything you need know.

Then we get the action. Note the word “apparition” in the first line. It means “immaterial and a sudden unexpected experience”. Usage of this word elevates the whole thing on a new level. It performs a defamiliarizing maneuver, makes it new for the reader.

Then we get the images — faces and petals, crowd and bough. They’re mashed together into one indelible image. And that’s it. No further ornate frothing necessary.

Pound used Japanese poetic forms, such as haiku and hokku, as a template. He emphasized the words by inventive punctuation. Spaces between the words make an impression of intense movement. It seems like many other words were lost in that flow.

The most interesting thing about this poem is the lack of verbs. They are not written, but implied. It makes the poem motionless and dynamic in the same time. This contradiction wrecks the perception as it implies that reader has to make his mind about what he had read instead of being spoonfed with a singular interpretation.

***

“In a Station of the Metro” was written at the time when Pound was in the tail end of his Imagist phase just before shifting towards more intense Vorticism.

He wasn't very fond of then-mainstream poetry. For him it was stuck in the past, making the Shepard tone on infinite loop and suffering from a severe form of flowery verbosity.

Pound was trying to defamiliarize common things in order to enhance its perception. To “make it new!” as he often exclaimed.

And that is what “In a Station of the Metro” represents. It shows the Pound change of gears more clearly than any other poem of this period.

References

Ezra Pound — Gaudier-Brzeska 1916

Edward Hirsch — A Poet’s Glossary 2014