[Rose Kelleher]

What Daniel said. I love that poem. The metaphor works visually, and I think comparing the faces of strangers to something beautiful says something else, too. (Yeah, I know, Pound didn't love everyone in the Metro station. But in the world of the poem he did.)

[Mike Slippkauskas]

It's also a rhythmic, even metrical, masterpiece. The first line can be read as an entirely regular iambic hexameter with some very light stresses (on apparitions, and the prepositions of and in). The second line opens on an emphatic stress Petals, trips along with three unstressed syllables, then three lovely hammer blows, wet, black bough.

Sensitive modulation throughout.

[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited February 15, 2008).]

[Roger Slater]

"Its simplicity and the implied metaphor--the faces of poeple seen in in subway station are like leaves or petals on a flowering tree--is brilliant."

Why?

Not only is the image utterly devoid of any emotional or metaphorical resonance, at least for me, but, as one who has logged more than his share of hours in subways stations, I can assure you that the faces of people there are not even slightly similar to leaves or petals on a flowering tree. In fact, not only is each face un-petal-like, but to suggest that they are all petals on a single bough is to suggest that they are all very much alike, and that strikes me as untrue and poorly observed. Even if the faces were like petals on a tree, though, why is this observation particularly interesting?

[Mark Allinson]

There is a hint of Emperor-clothing in all this, I think. I agree, Roger.

This image is absolutely unremarkable, in my opinion, and I can think of a dozen classical haiku which, even in translation, are much finer images.

[David Landrum]

Originally posted by Roger Slater:
as one who has logged more than his share of hours in subways stations, I can assure you that the faces of people there are not even slightly similar to leaves or petals on a flowering tree.

Here I'll have to disagree. They are very much like that. I think of poplar leaves when I read this or of the hawthorne in the back yard of a house I lived in some years ago. The fact that they are on a wet, black bough suggests late fall, desolation, Shakespeares yellow leaves on boughs that shake against the cold. A subway is about the most desolate place in the world. The faces are lifeless, blank, and washed out. The carefully placed words create an image that is convincing.

I have read a lot of zen poetry, Chinese and Japanese, and think this one could hold its own for that sort of imagery, though it seems a little gauche to compare the poems of the ancient masters to other poetry.

I guess we have to agree that we interpret differently.

[Roger Slater]

OK, I'll retreat and allow that the poem may not be complete crap, and may even be pretty good. But what makes it superior or canonical? Perhaps there's historical context, that this poem was trail blazing in its day? Or that the poem became a favorite exemplar of the imagist movement?

There are certainly other examples of poems becoming famous while not clearly being all that great. Mother Goose is full of unexceptional ditties that have lived for centuries and for which, I suspect, we feel a bond that we would not feel if one of them turned up for the first time on the Metrical board.

Would Pound's "Metro" poem, had it never been written, excite enthusiastic critiques if posted here? Would anyone here hail it as an instant classic, bound to enter the canon for the indefinite future? Or would even its greatest fans here at Erato merely praise it and move on?

I mean these questions only half rhetorically, since I admit to not being a fan of "this kind of thing" under any circumstances. But I am convinced that there are several poems here at Erato that have received far more universal praise than Pound's poem would receive if it were a new poem and not canonical.

A good poem, or even a very good poem, I'm willing to grant you, though I don't quite see it. But a great poem that deserves to live forever? One that gives goosebumps or meets the Dickinson test of making you feel that the top of your head has been removed? Not even close.

[David Landrum]

I've said too much and don't want this to turn into a two-person debate, so I'll be interested to see what other people have to say (maybe chip in later).

[This message has been edited by David Landrum (edited February 15, 2008).]

[Mark Allinson]

... though it seems a little gauche to compare the poems of the ancient masters to other poetry.

Now there is a truly puzzling statement, David.

Can you explain why you feel it is "gauche" to compare ancient and modern poetry?

[David Landrum]

Originally posted by Mark Allinson:
[b]Now there is a truly puzzling statement, David.
Can you explain why you feel it is "gauche" to compare ancient and modern poetry?

I simply meant that I venerate the poetry of the ancient masters to such a degree that it seems gauche to drag their stuff out and compare it to modern poets. There seems something semi-religious about the writings of the Chinese and Japanese masters--and a lot of them wrote from an inspiration in Zen Buddhism or Taoism. So I say it seems cheeky and inappropriate to take these delicate, contemplative poems and force them into harsh light as material witnesses against Pound's poems or anyone else's. They don't belong in a poetic line-up.

That was mainly what I meant.

[RCL]

It might be helpful to place it in the context of literary movements, namely, "Imagism," which Pound launched (in Blast?), his Metro poem an example. He backed off and ridiculed it as "Amygism," referring to Amy Lowell.

At least that's part of what I recall from studying it fifty year ago.

Cheers,

------------------
Ralph