Sometimes Risking Modernity

Several aspects of the poem “In a station of the metro” by Ezra Pound suggest that the overall message of the poem is pro-modernity. Upon first glance at the poem, the reader notices the poem’s unusual length: fourteen words, and only two lines long. Pound’s ability to make a quality poem with so few words highlights the value of efficiency in modern society. The poem showcases the author’s ability to artistically convey a message in as few words as possible. Even though the poem is only a fraction of the length of more conventional poems, expresses the same depth as any other respected poem.

Pound’s choice of words also makes a case for modernity. In the first line, “apparition” implies that people who once were not able to travel are now within the station. The faces appear in a “crowd,” surely a sign that the train station is flourishing with good business and prosperity. “These faces in the crowd” become “petals on a wet black bough” in the next line, suggesting that like flowers, the people flourish. All living things need water to grow; the bough is “wet,” implying that within modernity, the people have the resources they need in order to succeed.



Several aspects of the poem “In a station of the metro” by Ezra Pound suggest that the overall message of the poem is anti-modernity. Upon first glance at the poem, the reader notices the poem’s unusual length: fourteen words, and only two lines long. Pound’s choice to make the poem so short highlights the shortcomings of industrialism. Like the best machines, the poem uses as few resources as possible to carry out its function. While the poem takes very little time to read, the reader must spend a much longer time trying to decipher the meaning of the poem. The poem shows that the shortcuts machines allow us today may end up costing us more tomorrow. The brevity of the poem also shows that modernity favors efficiency over rich detail and description.

Pound’s choice of words also makes a case against modernity. The first line reads: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd.” “Apparition” implies that the people in the station are ghostlike, and therefore devoid of life, pale, and directionless. If their life once had meaning, modernity has taken it away. In the second line, these people are “petals on a wet black bough.” “Black” often connotes death and, in discussions of industrialism, soot from coal. The bough, straight and black, could symbolize train tracks. There are no verbs in the second line; the petals simply exist upon the bough. The petals, or people, no longer truly live; they only follow where the train of modernity takes them.