Tuesday Poem: “In A Station of the Metro” By Ezra Pound
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd,
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound, 1885-1972
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Last week I posted a haiku by Bassho as my Tuesday poem. This week I have chosen a very short poem by Ezra Pound, a poet greatly influenced by Chinese and Japanese verse, to complement the haiku. In a Staion of the Metro is not a haiku, but I believe it encapsulates much of what the haiku form seeks to accomplish, chiefly the capture of that single “a-ha” moment in the most succinct form possible. I am also intrigued by the way the title is effectively part of the poem—although not necessary for the subsequent two lines to also work—and that like a haiku, the poem works equally well when the lines are read in reverse order.
Recently I posted The World as Meditation, a poem by Wallace Stephens. Ezra Pound is another American poet from the same era, much of whose poetic work I admire greatly, while admiring his politics, most notably fascism and anti-semitism, not at all.
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