William Carlos Williams And Ezra Pound: Poem Analysis

As literature evolved over time, different styles of writing emerged in response to societal changes that occurred in each individual writer’s lifetime. One style of writing that emerged in the early 1900’s was described as Imagism. This style of writing is in which a writer writes in a specific way that evokes an image within the audience’s minds. Two writers from this time period that wrote in the Imagist style were William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Williams became known for his imagist works such as “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This is Just to Say,” both of which are forms of imagism but in far different ways. A work that stood out from the imagist works was “In a Station of the Metro,” by Ezra pound which is a very simplistic but deep
One work of his that creates a strong image is “In a Station of the Metro.” This poem goes as follows, “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough” (318). This Poem is quite short but allows for the reader to grasp an image within the words and put a meaning behind what is presented. From this poem, many different images are evoked within the readers mind. This poem allows for the reader to be teleported into a train station in where a person sees all these people walk by them, but the people lack facial characteristics or emotion. This further allows the reader to imagine a time when they have experienced the same situation, where you sit in a room of people and there are people walking around you and you see the outlines of people but don’t pay attention to their features or what they are doing. As described in this work by Ezra Pound, imagism allows for the reader to put meaning to what is going on behind the picture that the writer creates through their words. Furthermore, imagism creates a picture in the readers mind which allows for the reader to think of times in their life where one has felt similarly to what is occurring within the work of