He helps us to see poems, such as this famous, peculiarly haunting 19-syllable haiku, in a new light:The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.That Mr Moody is constantly being upstaged by the subject of his study is not surprising.
It's important to recognize, though, that the subject of the poem is not "these faces"; the subject is "the apparition".
Ezra Pound made the combination of disparate things a principle of imagism, as in his poem on a station of the Paris Métro: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd:/Petals on a wet, black bough". Faces and petals make an immediate visual match.
It wasn't long, just this: The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet black bough.
The cluster of associations triggered by the apparition of the faces — Odysseus' descent into Hades, Dante's visit to the Inferno, Persephone and Demeter — is present in the twentieth-century subway, but only for those who can see.
Ezra Pound made the combination of disparate things a principle of imagism, as in his poem on a station of the Paris Métro: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd:/Petals on a wet, black bough".
The best-known of all Pound's poems of the London years is about Paris, the imagist "In a Station of the Metro": "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough".
Just weeks before as an undergraduate, I had been reading Ezra Pound poems like "In a Station of the Metro": "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough".
Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" is also the subject of a lengthy discussion, with much hingeing on its semicolon rather than comma ("The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough").
He claimed that his best-known short poem, "In a Station of the Metro," took a year and a half to write, and that he had cut it down from thirty lines: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Rather, it presents figurative art portraying the human experience of modern life, from the late 19th century onwards.The exhibition's title comes from an Ezra Pound poem inspired by a journey on the Paris Metro: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; petals on a wet, black bough".
