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About Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro"
Illustration by Ryan Inzana for The Wall Street Journal
"In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was originally published in 1913. The poem consists of only fourteen words and no verbs, and it is widely considered a leading example of Imagist poetry. Imagism was a movement popularized in England and America in the early 1900s that focused on simplicity, precision of imagery, and experimenting with non-traditional forms. With "In a Station of the Metro," Pound describes his experience in a metro station in Paris. The poem originally consisted of thirty lines, but Pound later reduced it to a mere fourteen words.
If you would like to read in-depth analyses on the poem, follow the links below:
"On 'In a Station of the Metro'" by Mark Doty for poets.org
"In a Station of the Metro" by Pericles Lewis for Yale University's Modernism Lab
"A Poem Distills Life and Death Into Two Lines" by Willard Spiegelman for The Wall Street Journal
Analyses by various writers and literary critics for Modern American Poetry