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{{short description|Imagist poem in English by Ezra Pound published in 1913}}
"'''In a Station of the Metro'''" is an [[Imagist]] [[poem]] by [[Ezra Pound]] published in April 1913<ref name="higginson">{{cite book|last1=Higginson|first1=William J.|year=1985|title=The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku|location=Tokyo|publisher=Kodansha International|publication-date=1989|pages=51|quote=Six months after ''Poetry'' magazine began, in the issue of April 1913, Ezra Pound's now famous 'In a Station of the Metro' appeared. This may be the first published hokku in English.}}</ref> in the literary magazine ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]''.<ref>Axelrod, Steven Gould and Camille Roman, Thomas J. Travisano.''The New Anthology of American Poetry: Traditions and Revolutions, Beginnings to 1900''.Rutgers University Press (2003) p.663</ref> In the poem, Pound describes a moment in the underground metro station in Paris in 1912; he suggested that the faces of the individuals in the metro were best put into a poem not with a description but with an "equation". Because of the  treatment of the subject's appearance by way of the poem's own visuality, it is considered a quintessential [[Imagism|Imagist]] text.<ref name=Barbarese/>

It is sometimes considered to be the first [[haiku]] published in English,<ref name="higginson" /> though it lacks the traditional 3-line, 17-syllable structure of haiku.

The poem was reprinted in Pound's collection ''Lustra'' in 1917, and again in the 1926 anthology ''Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound'', which compiled his early pre-[[Hugh Selwyn Mauberley]] works.

==The poem==
{{Quote box
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| quote = <poem>The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.</poem>
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The poem contains only fourteen words (without a verb therein—making it a good example of the [[verbless poetry]] form).<ref>Hirsch, Edward 'A Poet's Glossary' Houghton Mi
n,  2014</ref>

Pound was influential in the creation of Imagist poetry until he left the movement to embrace [[Vorticism]] in 1914. Pound, though briefly, embraced Imagism stating that it was an important step away from the verbose style of [[Victorian literature]] and suggested that it "is the sort of American stuff I can show here in Paris without its being ridiculed".<ref>Ayers, David. ''Modernsim: A Short Introduction''. Blackwell (2004) p.2</ref> "In a Station of the Metro" is an early work of [[Modernist poetry]] as it attempts to "break from the pentameter", incorporates the use of visual spacing as a poetic device, and does not contain any verbs.<ref name=Barbarese>Barbarese, J.T. "Ezra Pound's Imagist Aesthetics: Lustra to Mauberley" ''The Columbia history of American poetry''Columbia University Press (1993) pp.307-308</ref> The work originally appeared with different spacing between the groups of words. This can be found in the on-line version of ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'' magazine for April 1913.

==Analysis==
{{more citations needed|section|date=May 2009}}
The poem was first published in 1913 and is considered one of the leading poems of the [[Imagist]] tradition. Pound's process of deletion from thirty lines<ref>{{cite web |title=On "In a Station of the Metro" |url=http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metro.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190518123806/https://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metro.htm |archive-date=18 May 2019 |website=MAPS: Modern American Poetry Site}}</ref> to only fourteen words typifies [[Imagism]]'s focus on economy of language, precision of imagery and experimenting with non-traditional verse forms. The poem is Pound's written equivalent for the moment of revelation and intense emotion he felt at the Paris Metro's [[Concorde (Paris Métro)|Concorde]] station.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Pound|first=Ezra|date=1 September 1914|title=Vorticism|pages=461–471|work=Fortnightly Review|issue=96|url=https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/vorticism/}}</ref>

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. "In a poem of this sort," as Pound explained, "one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective."<ref>Pound (1916) Gaudier-Brzeska, 103. https://archive.org/details/gaudierbrzeska00pounrich</ref>

[[File:Suzuki Harunobu - Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night.jpg|thumb|alt=Colour print of a finely-dressed Japanese woman holding a lantern at night, admiring the plum blossoms.|Rupert Richard Arrowsmith posited that Pound may have been inspired by this eighteenth-century [[ukiyo-e]] print by [[Suzuki Harunobu]] he saw in the [[British Library]]: ''Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night.'']]

Like other modernist artists of the period, Pound found inspiration in Japanese art, but the tendency was to re-make and to meld cultural styles rather than to copy directly or slavishly. He may have been inspired by a [[Suzuki Harunobu]] print he almost certainly saw in the British Library (Rupert Richard Arrowsmith mentions the specific prints he matched to verse), and probably attempted to write [[haiku]]-like verse during this period.<ref name ="Arrowsmith lecture">[http://vimeo.com/arrowsmith/cosmopolitanism-and-modernism Rupert Richard Arrowsmith, Video of a lecture discussing the importance of Japanese culture to Pound's early poetry], ''[[London University School of Advanced Study]]'', March 2012.</ref><!-- the ref is only for the last para -->

==See also==
*[[Verbless poetry]]

==References==
{{reflist}}
Wall Street journal, Jan 7-8, 2017 
Page C14 review by Willard Spiegelman

== Sources ==
* [https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/vorticism/ Ezra Pound "Vorticism"], in ''[[The Fortnightly Review]]'', Sept. 1, 1914
* The Cat Empire, "The Crowd", Nov/Dec, 2004
* Rupert Richard Arrowsmith, ''Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African, and Pacific Art and the London Avant-Garde'' (Oxford University Press, 2011), {{ISBN|978-0-191-59568-4}}

==External links==
{{wikisource}}
* [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metro.htm Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois]

{{Ezra Pound}}

[[Category:American poems]]
[[Category:1913 poems]]
[[Category:Poetry by Ezra Pound]]
[[Category:Works originally published in Poetry (magazine)]]
[[Category:Imagism]]
[[Category:Modernist poems]]