In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
These faces flashed like a phantom in the crowd;
The petals on the wet black branches were dotted.
"In the Subway Station" has only two lines and 14 words, and is a one-image poem. It was written by Pound based on his impressions at the Place de la Concorde subway station in Paris. Although the poem is short, the poet went through a considerable period of deliberation and deliberation before finalizing it.
Beautiful faces flashed before Pound's eyes at the subway station. On the way back, these faces appeared before his eyes again and again, until finally they gradually became patches of colorful prints. At this time, he came up with the idea of ??making a non-realistic painting that purely expressed the speckled colors. However, he could not paint, so he could only write poetry instead. The two lines of the poem depend on each other. Apparition is an illusion, a ghost, which reminds people of the faces of passengers coming and going. The petals in the second row convey a message of beauty. This message becomes more prominent due to the contrast of the dark and moist branches. At the same time, it also gives people a sense of blur and overlap, and the artistic conception is fuller.
This poem is very similar to the works of French Impressionism in the 19th century. If read repeatedly, readers can draw a colorful picture. At the same time, you will also find that the poetry is very clever in the treatment of sound. The [p] sound in the first line echoes the [p] sound in the second line, but one of them only constitutes an unstressed syllable; there is the [au] sound at the end of both lines, but the former has the consonant [d] and the latter does not. The repetition of the [e] sound in the second line enhances the musicality of this short poem. The metaphor of the petals hanging on the wet black branches reflects the poet's impressive imagination.