The Importance of Title: An In-depth Analysis of Pound's "In a Station of the Metro"

Ezra Pound was one of the greatest poets of the Modern movement. This poem proves it.

Without its title, Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” may, at first glance, seem like an awkward description of some abstract thought that happened to jump into his mind one day. There is no coherence, no clarity; the words are absolutely meaningless. The title tells us everything we need to know in order to dissect the poem. The title gives the words context, and prepares the reader’s mind for the descriptions that follow.

Pound wrote during a time when industrialization was fully spreading through American culture. Public transportation was an innovation and was responsible for bringing about a massive paradigm shift in how people got from one place to another. His specific use of the article “a” instead of “the” gives the impression that the metro is everywhere. It does not matter where you are; the metro is a standard part of life. Modernists like Pound focused their work on seeing the world in different ways. On a literal level the metro forced people to see their world in a different way, and Pound reflects that feeling in the structure of his poem; it is an unfamiliar style for the time and forces the reader to focus strictly on the words presented in front of him. Pound is asking the reader for their unrestricted interpretation. He has set the context with the title, but the rest is up to the reader.

A metro evokes images of concrete and steel. We think about the smell: musty and wet, smeared with oil. The train is also conjured; the squeal created by the brakes as it pulls up to the platform, and the rush of wind that brushes your face as it disappears into the darkness of the tunnel. The focus in this poem, however, is on the people that ride the metro, hurrying to and from work, making the metro an integral part of their lives. It is this image that comes to mind with the word metro that makes the first line of the poem so fascinating. An apparition is a ghost -- something that is transparent, vague and shapeless. The crowd of people waiting in the station are formless just as an apparition is.

Many conclusions can be drawn from this comparison. The people in the station are in a trance; day in and day out they take the metro to and from their livelihood. It is a vital part of their every day lives, but they look emotionally dead because their faces are blank and indistinguishable from each other. They are probably even mentally blank when they ride the metro, not thinking about anything except what they will do when they get to work or arrive at home. Pound is questioning the existence of these people. Not whether they actually exist but whether their lives have any meaning at all because they are slaves to their schedules.

Pound then starts to reverse these questions with the next line. Petals are parts of a flower. They are usually white and when viewed from a distance, they all look the same. This remains consistent with the word apparition and the image of people’s faces being indistinguishable from each other. The outline of each petal melts into the next from a distance too; not only is it impossible to tell the difference between two petals, but you cannot see where one ends and the other begins. When you examine the individual petals closely, however, you will notice that there are differences between them and the definition of each one becomes visible. This can be used to develop the interpretation of the poem. The faces are only vague and shapeless from a distances, but if you were to stop and examine two people side by side, you would see that they are different from each other.

The second line also adds a new dimension to the question about existence. Petals are delicate and fragile, just as life is. A bough is a large branch on a tree, and petals that come from trees may stick to the bough for a time, but eventually they will fall off and die. Life is fleeting, and can slip away so easily.

Pound compares the fragility of life with its meaning. With life as fragile as it is, perhaps readers are being called to examine whether or not what they are doing with it is meaningful. This revalation is only possible because of the poem’s title. If it had been anything else, a number, a single word, untitled, it would not have worked. The title gives the reader a specific image which he can put the lines into, and be able to draw his own conclusions.