“IN A STATION OF THE METRO”. Willlard Spiegelman had a fine analysis in the Wall Street Journal (January 6) of Ezra Pound’s masterpiece “In a Station of the Metro”. I showed it to Mary Jane because the poem is a favorite of hers, and she liked Spiegelman’s essay also.
Here is the poem:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Spiegelman notes that the poem began as a 30 line poem and wound up as three (Spiegelman says that the title should be considered to be the first line, suggesting “a loose version of a Japanese haiku (with 6-8-6 words per line, in place of the classic 5-7-5 syllables)”