In a Station of the Metro

                             by Ezra Pound

                                                   安玲

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

1.Themes:

(1)Versions of Reality: The poem blends two images into one. In the process, it seems to downplay the reality of everyday life as an "apparition," while the spiritual life of memory and the imagination is heightened. Pound thought that a great image could reveal the "higher" reality of something that already seems real to us, like people getting on a subway.

(2) Man and the Natural World: In the poem, people and nature literally become one as the faces in the subway become flowers on a tree. The analogy between faces and flowers is not just a simile, which would say that one thing is "like" another. Rather, it is metaphor: the poem implies that the faces arepetals on a tree.

(3) Modernization: If you were a person living in Paris near the beginning of the 20th century, there would be a lot of reasons to be afraid of the metro. The crowd of anonymous strangers pushing past one another, blank stares, the dirty wet ground. This poem, though, presents the new technology as the scene of a mystical experience, in which the poet and his readers are reminded of the serenity and calm of a Japanese garden.

(4) The Supernatural: One of the central mysteries of the poem is, why are the faces the poets sees an "apparition"? This word usually refers to ghosts or supernatural spirits. Pound seems to be comparing the beautiful strangers in the subway to ghosts who appear suddenly and then disappear from your life just as fast. 

2.paraphrase: A man sees a bunch of faces in the subway and thinks they look like flowers on a tree branch.

Line 1:

• The poet is watching faces appear in a crowded metro (subway) station.
• You wouldn’t know it only from reading the poem, but we’re in Paris, which means that everyone looks really nice.
• The poet is trying to get us to see things from his perspective, and the word "apparition" suggests that the faces are becoming visible to him very suddenly and probably disappearing just as fast. They almost look like ghosts. If you’ve ever been in a crowded subway, then you’re probably familiar with this phenomenon.
• By calling them "these faces," he puts us right there in the metro station, as if he were pointing his finger and saying, "Look!"
• The station must be pretty full, because there is a "crowd."

Line 2: 

Although he doesn’t say so, the words "looks like" are implicit at the start of this line. The faces in the crowd "look like" flower petals on a "wet, black bough."

• A "bough" is a big tree branch, and the word, in case you’re wondering, is pronounced "bow," as in "take a bow."
• When is a tree branch wet and black? Probably at night, after the rain. A Paris subway, on the other hand, is always wet and black.
• Now, we’re going out on a limb here (pun!), but he may be seeing the faces reflected in a puddle over black asphalt. Or it could just be a more general sense of wetness. At any rate, the faces in the subway are being compared to flowers on a tree branch.
• Another fact to keep in mind is that Japan is famous for its beautiful flowering trees, and considering that this poem is written in Japanese haiku style . . . well, heck, he might just be thinking of a Japanese tree.

3.form: “haiku--like”---The poem is a variation on the Japanese form of the haiku, a very short poem divided into three sections with a certain number of syllables in each section. In English, haikus are often written as three-line poems. The first line has five syllables, the second seven, and the third five again. The haiku is really short, but it packs a big punch.

It’s hard to achieve the same effect when writing in a language other than Japanese, which is probably why Pound doesn’t follow strict rules in creating this short poem. For example, Pound’s poem has two long lines instead of three short ones. So, how can we tell that the poem is ahaiku? For one thing, the Japanese version often features a contrast between two events or images; Pound’s poem clearly contrasts the two images of the faces in the crowd and the petals on the bough. The poem attempts to fuse these images into one. Second, the Japanesehaiku usually has a word that lets the reader know the season of year. It’s not super-obvious, but Pound’s poem also has a word ("petals") to indicate the season – springtime – in which it takes place.

4.figures of speech: 

symbols:  The Crowd of Faces--Line 1: The entire poem is basically a single metaphor. If you were ever confused about the difference between a metaphor and a simile, and the difference it can make to use one instead of the other, this is a great poem to look at. Pound could have said that the faces "look like" flower petals, which would have produced a simile. By leaving this expression out, the poem reads as if it were saying that the faces arepetals. Textbook metaphor. The two images are fused into one.

      The Bough--Line 2: The success of the comparison between the human faces and the flower petals depends upon making the second image seem very life-like. So Pound uses some intense natural imagery to describe the "wet, black bough" to which the petals are attached. This image connects to our sense of sight and touch, so the reader feels like he or she could reach out and pluck the faces out of the scene like a flower from a tree. He also uses some alliteration with "black" and "bough," as if the words on the page and the images in our head were fusing together at the same time.

5.notes:  the metro: the Paris subway system