[Michael F]

Very interesting discussion.

I’m also in the “it’s perfect as it is” camp. It made me think of that other very famous short poem about absence going through like a needle. Now, I might argue that the needle example takes things further, adding determination to the image, specifying a certain emotional meaning -- perhaps this is the difference between image and trope? Does that determination make the poem ‘better’? I think that depends on your predilection for meaning versus aesthetic appreciation. I tend to be a seeker after meaning, so after a while I get tired of 'just' image; after a while I crave the raindrop, not the fog. Can something be better than perfect? Now I confuse myself. Anyway, IMO if the image is good enough, it is its own poem.

I can see Eliot inserting such a gem into a longer poem. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I’m tempted to go search The Wasteland or another early work for one, but I resist. I know there are a few tucked away in the Quartets, because I have always remembered them.

Also, it’s always impressed me that many of Frost’s poems are comparatively scant of metaphor; but when he includes one, it usually strikes me like lightning. Of course, in Frost's case, like later Eliot, I think it's almost never 'pure image'.

[John Isbell]

I think I'll just throw into the mix my memory that Pound dramatically reduced his two-line poem from a piece that was 50 or 60 lines long. If memory does serve, the footnote seems relevant.
I also imagine the off-rhyme was more striking a century ago than it is today.

Cheers,
John

[Allen Tice]

John, that's relevant information about the Metro poem. As a side question, I'd be very -- somewhat -- curious to see what he cut it down from, or what evidence is available about that. Interesting. Thanks.

The larger matter of modern nano poems versus heftier (but meaty) poems still animates me. I don't want to go all ancient and rehash what was said over two millennia ago, but the thought arose that if one took one of the examples from the Iliad posted above and looked at it as a completed work, what could we say? So, setting aside my offhand title and non-metrical bare rephrasing for just a second (we can surely critique and tweak that and the new poem itself if we want, why not!?), here's a specimen. Could it become a little bit of a "real" poem -- not Metro quality -- but a snapshot poem if the prosody was worked up?


..... . ...Rain At Elsinore

He spoke and led the way to the bed,
and his wife followed after him.
These two slept upon the royal bed,
but Hamlet wandered through the
crowds of men like a wild beast.

[Woody Long]

re John's mention of Pound's earlier drafts: See here.

Scroll down for an extract from a 1990 critical article & the original 1913 Poetry Mag version.

That Poetry Mag version is here, in its original published context.

— Woody

P.S.

Notice that, in Poetry Mag, Metro follows Pound's A Pact, which begins (on the previous page):

I make truce with you, Walt Whitman—
I have detested you long enough.

I would guess that there was not a much longer poem, but just a whole lot of drafts. If there was a longer poem, then it was guessably more a matter of extracting the two lines & then revising and revising, rather than reducing.

— W.

[John Isbell]

Thanks, Woody - good to have more than an old memory here.

Cheers,
John

[Allen Tice]

Thank you, Woody. The Poetry Magazine version has different title capitalization, line spacing and different punctuation (a colon) than the one I quickly copied from somewhere to start this off. The spacing before the colon and "bough" is less than the other expanded spacings:

..............IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition-----of these faces-----in the crowd---:
Petals-----on a wet, black---- bough----.

All of which is noteworthy. As to the perhaps possibly 50- or 60-line long versions, one needs JSTOR access to get this:

"In T.P.'s Weekly of June 6, 1913, Pound explains his "Impulse" to write and his technique of writing, and ends by narrating the genesis of the haiku. After seeing beautiful faces in the Paris Underground, he says, he tried to articulate his experience and ended with "nothing but spots of colour" until, months later, he remembered the Japanese tradition, "where sixteen [sic] syllables are counted enough for a poem if you arrange and punctuate them properly."

But Pound's Metro example is the convenient demonstration, and not what I think we're after, or at least what I want to explore further.

[John Isbell]

Very nice. Thanks Allen!

John