One poem in English which has always fascinated me is Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro.” The poem is a well-known example of how imagery, which refers to the literal and sensorial aspects of a literary work, may be used in poetry to evoke in the reader an emotional response. The poem is composed of the following two lines:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.
Though terse, this couplet is pregnant with meaning. First, notice how the poet juxtaposes the vague and fleeting images in the first line against the sharp and well-defined images in the second.
There exists a definite contrast here, skillfully presented. White, as an image and a color, is implied in the word “apparition”; and this image of whiteness constrasts unexpectedly with the “black bough” in the second line. The effect is one of tension (due to the contrast) and mystery (due to the diction). Pound’s deft use of imagery works to instill in the reader a sense of mystery, tension, astonishment and surprise. What is the “apparation,” the reader might ask, and how does this specter relate to the image of the “petals on a wet, black bough”? The reader must pause and wonder.
It might be helpful to knopw that this poem was based on a personal experience, and Ezra Pound could well have chosen to relate his experience differently–other than through the technique of imagery–but the overall effect would have resulted less distinct and poignant.
Instead of stating flatly how beautiful these faces in the crowd were, the poet artfully bypasses empty rhetoric and allows the imagery to convey the experience. In effect, Pound utilizes what T.S. Eliot, his contemporary and fellow American-born poet, calles “the objective correlative.”
What is the objective correlative, and how is it used in Pound’s poem. According to T.S. Eliot, The objective correlative is a pattern of objects, actions events or situations that can serve to awaken in the reader the emotional response which the author desires without it being a direct statement of that emotion. Eliot believed that poets could never directly convey emotions through their poetry. he proposes, then, that the only way to achieve this was through the use of an objective correlative.
In Pound’s poem the objective correlative is found in the pattern of images used. For example, the words “apparition,” “faces,” and “crowd” function as images which solicit as certain response from the reader. “Apparition” suggests something spiritual, evanascent, intangible. “Faces,” though general in its denotation, gives an idea of plurality. And “crowd” manages to convey–because of the hard “c” and the dipthong (/au/-sound)–a more concrete idea, something than an observant reader can virtually touch.
The word “crowd” contrasts dwith the ethereal quality of “apparition,” and this contrast, once established, is further enhanced in the second line. Here the poet has chosen “petals,” “wet,” “black,” “bough”–words which convey definite denotations. The pattern of movement in the imagery evolves from general in the first line to concrete and specific in the second.
The overall effect is one of tension. Reading the poem, once senses the impression that something extraordinary is happening. The reader may not know exactly what this something is, but through Pound’s judicious patterning of images, the reader somehow senses that the experience is there, in the poem, an emotion whioch touches the heart–vibrant, real, and alive. Ezra Pound achieved this response–as well as created a memorable poem–not by invoking a direct statement of his experience, but through the masterful use of the objective correlative.
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