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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
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"In a Station of the Metro" by Pericles Lewis for Yale University's Modernism Lab
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"A Poem Distills Life and Death Into Two Lines" by Willard Spiegelman for The Wall Street Journal
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Analyses by various writers and literary critics for Modern American Poetry