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  • Essay / Analysis of the poem "In a Subway Station" by Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound or what I would call him the influencer. Ezra is one of those who have left their mark throughout with their poetry in 20th century literature. Without a doubt, when we mention Ezra, two things come to mind: his art and his poetry. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Speaking of the poems from one of his greatest works of all time “In a Subway Station”. This poem is very short and he made it somehow mysterious. For example, the author described seeing faces in the station, and he did not describe himself as either a passenger or a driver. Pound claims it is crowded, meaning there are a lot of people at the station, which leads us to recognize that the station is obviously very busy. Most importantly, Pound made this poem very short which is only two lines long. Simply, we can compare it to Japanese haiku, both focusing on a single moment of experience followed by a moment of reflection. What we could understand is that when the doors open the faces appear and then when the doors are closed the faces disappear. Another way to describe it at one moment there are faces as clear as it can be, on the other hand the next moment it disperses, even the mind cannot remember this anymore that was happening before. Pound created an image in the reader's mind. as readers read, they can imagine the station, the train, and the faces. If we look closely, we can see that Pound has not used any verbs among the descriptive words that make readers recognize something that Pound is very creative in his works. The author insisted on creating some kind of scary image because he used the word "appearance", he could use "spectacles" or "display", but actually he decided on "appearance" because it means an unexpected sight. Let's not forget that the two lines of the poem correspond to the subject. From the first reading of "In a Subway Station", many readers will definitely be confused because it makes no sense, but the relationship with these two moments will create meaning for readers. Keep in mind: This is just a sample.Get a custom paper from our expert writers now.Get a custom essayIn fact, the use of just fourteen words makes us understand that Pound chose these words very carefully for a specific image. From the title of the poem it is easy to notice the place which is Paris and for more information the search mentions “La Concorde”. In conclusion, it all depends on how readers understand the poem. For some it is as clear as crystal, for others it is very confusing because of the sentence fragments. I believe it is not impossible to define. Works Cited Bush, R. (2015). The Influencer: Ezra Pound's Journalism in London and Paris, 1908-1925. Journal of Modern Literature, 38(4), 109-133. Carpenter, H. (2017). Short modernist poetry: "In a subway station" by Ezra Pound. Journal of Modern Literature, 41(4), 1-14.Cook, A.M. (2018). Ezra Pound and Imagism. In A Companion to Modernist Poetry (pp. 79-93). Wiley. Cope, A. (2016). “Faces on a Subway”: an analysis of “In a Subway Station” by Ezra Pound. ANQ: A quarterly journal of short articles, notes and reviews, 29(3), 150-153.Drysdale, CR (2020). Poetics of Ezra Pound's places: imagining cities through "In a metro station". Literary Compass, 17(12), e12677. Gordon, A. (2019). Pound's "In a Metro Station" and the haiku tradition. Notes and queries, 66(4), 606-608. Homberger,.