So now, we're talking for a few minutes about the most famous imagist poem, Ezra Pound's In a Station of the Metro. So before we find out what happened, what Pound's account of the making of this poem is, what do you see? Max, what do you see? >> The petals on the wet black barrow remind me of the HD. There seems to be a similar effect where you see something's been germinating or something colorful or something beautiful among the [INAUDIBLE]- >> And natural. >> Something natural, yeah, among growing something dead. >> What's different, though? What's different in this strategy from the HD strategy? >> Well, we have people here in this poem. >> There are no people in the two HD poems we talked about. >> No. >> So what's the, Molly, if someone were to say to you, you study Pound, what's this poem about? I'm going to use the word, about. >> [LAUGH] >> Which I don't think we've used much. Maybe in talking about Whitman a little bit, but. >> Well, it's a representation of what he sees in that particular scene, in the suburban scene. >> Over a course of time? >> No, it's a moment. >> A moment. >> It's like an apparition, sort of signal. It's like a vision. >> Let's talk about apparition, the word, apparition. Anna, go with it. I mean, this is a hard word. >> I mean, apparition, to me, could be, when you think about it like in the Shakespearian sense, of like a ghost appearing or- >> Ghostly. >> It could be like something just appears. It's kind of like the noun of to appear. It just like- >> In that sense of apparition, it's almost an afterimage. >> Sure. >> Like ghosts or afterimages, I guess. That I've been thinking about this problem for a long time, but you're saying that makes me think for the very first time, for me, that there's an implication of after thought. Even though, as Molly Wright would suggest, this is about a moment, and it tries to be as present in the moment as it can, but it's almost about a recollection, the apparition of what I saw. If you put your thumb over the apparition of, then you get the pure image, the pure objective thing. We're going to see this in so much depends on red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water. Where are the white chickens? >> Beside the white chickens. >> Beside the white chickens. >> [LAUGH] >> The apparition of these faces, what if it was just these faces in the crowd? Go on. >> I think we're focused on our- >> Would it be better? >> On the distinction between the object and the image itself, right, the image is something we hold in our minds that always has an aura. >> And that's what the apparition is. >> An oratory, right. So I think the apparition is harkening or revoking that sense of aura. >> So if there is anything metapoetic here, it's the word, apparition, in a way. The apparition, I'm now conjuring, I'm now delivering to you the appearance, how it appeared. >> Very much like the HD poems, which both started with the symbolism and the more undefined qualities of the things. This one starts out with that undefined. And then it goes into something more specific. >> Okay, I think it´s almost like that sudden shift in perception where you´re sort of like if you´re looking off in to the sky, not really looking, and all of the suddenly you see a cloud that´s shaped like an elephant, and you have that moment where the image sort of freezes and turns into something else. >> It´s a moment of recognition, essentially. >> An instant in time. >> Yeah. >> He sees something, these faces I think There were these sets the phases apart from the crowd of course, and it suggest that there is something familiar, or something almost expected, or something almost sort out after into those phases, as oppose to the rest of the opposes. >> Alec, I think you mentioned people? Who mentioned that there are people? >> Max. >> Max did, but I still want to go with Aileen on this stuff. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] There are people in the home, but barely. These faces in the, it's like the person who comes to town every once in a while, Bruce Springsteen, and he says, Philadelphia it's good to see familiar faces. He's not really talking about me. I love Bruce, but he's almost not talking about individual people, he's talking about the faces that he sees. Am I pushing this too far, is there a little bit of dehumanization in the faces rendering, the faces in the crowd? >> I think so. I mean, the face isn't A person in its totality. But I do think it's interesting that a face is often almost always kind of the defining identification marker of a person. It's a face is really the primary thing you use to distinguish different people. >> It's not like the app version of these noses, >> Made of a bit. >> Let's not get into noses again. >> I think in is important too. It seems like it's these faces out of all the other faces rather than- >> These particular photos. >> The faces of the crowd. >> But what he's trying to do is figure out later, Pam already said in a minute well, maybe we'll tell us a little bit of the story of the making of this poem but >> He's trying to figure out what to do visually using visual words, words that are visual like in the Imagist mode. This is very early Imagism and it's classic Imagism as we see it now. He's trying to figure out what to do with them. And so you have to some, I'm going to use that word dehumanize again, you have to render or reduce The individual subjectivities and intelligences of the individuals in the crowd. Of course you have to do that with a crowd anyway. And then pin them down with something that's very static and natural and visual. So, nothing wrong with that. It's just it's something that needs to be observed. So he really worked hard. [INAUDIBLE] what do you remember of the story of the composition of this? >> Well three years after the writing of this poem he narrates how one day after disembarking from a metro in Paris he saw a woman's face in the crowd. And then after the woman's face the child's face. And he was so Struck and overwhelmed by the beauty of those faces that for a while he didn't know how to render them with exactitude. And only afterwards after contemplating it for a while he settled upon a formulation or what he calls I think was it a formula or calculation? >> Pattern >> Yes. >> If by pattern you mean not if by pattern you mean something with a repeat but splotches of color. >> And so he came up with this equation of petals on a wet black bough to >> Give some sort of distinction to those spaces. >> Radical conversation. Apparently he wrote many, many lines and in the end came up with these two. This is, I mean if you have, you write, and I'm wrong about this fact. I think it was a 30 line or a 90 line poem, whatever it is, a couple of pages that he wrote. And then bring it down to two. I mean has anybody ever had the experience of radical condensation to that degree. Well anybody, yes the condensory, you should hang out at the condensory, I think it would be very productive. This is a really radical condensation. I think we need to respect the fact of it's condensation. Finally, then let's talk about the [INAUDIBLE] position. [INAUDIBLE] describes this. Foam, as an effort in the language of exploration. He's exploring language as he composes. Right? This is a language of exploration, he is exploring the way reality can rendered in words, as he goes along. But And he's trying to avoid any ornament at all. But he's creating a juxtaposition, which he calls a superposition. Dave, can you tell us, just generally, how that works, generally, when you take one thing and put it next to another? >> Well, it's different from taking two different things and comparing them. Here he's taking one thing, focusing on it, And try to describe it in a different way. In that way I view it not as a comparison but sort of as a palimpsest, where he stays. >> One thing on the other. >> Yes. >> So, juxtaposition generally unleashes many interpretations. It opens things out. Yet imagism is supposed to be about Being so precise that the meaning is delivered precisely, exactly. This anticipates what's going to be very important in poetics as we move through this course, namely juxtaposition when we get to the language poets. For instance, someone like Ron Silliman uses what he calls the new sentence to create Through one thing after another that doesn't add up. That doesn't have a cause and effect or sequential relationship. So in a way Pound both evinces images perfectly, at least proposing a very precise rendering But he also through juxtaposition opens it up to wide interpretation. So why don't we conclude with one or two of you trying to interpret the juxtaposition. So we have faces in a crowd in a Metro station and we have wet black petals on a branch. How do they work together? [CROSSTALK] >> I think >> I'm sorry, the bough is wet. Thank you.- >> The bough is wet.- >> That is the first time I have ever been wrong. >> It's like little pink circles on a black background. That's how I think of it.- >> I think, yea, it's like [CROSSTALK]- >> So it's really painterly.- >> Yea.- >> An apparition of the face. He is seeing these spots of beauty like Ann Maurice was telling us. Set against this black bough so they're actually very.- >> So you are doing >> The images staying of delivering what precisely it means. I'm inviting you, and maybe it can't be done. Maybe it does resist opening up. What does Jeff's position create? What kind of meaning does it create? >> Well, it creates a metaphor here >> Perhaps that's the meaning of the exactitude of images, and it's not settling the specific traits or feature of the image, or the object itself. He was trying to figure out how to convey his impression of that image. And that was only possible through this cross section that he creates in the palm. >> Let's conclude by asking Emily >> Hi Emily. >> Hey. >> When I first read this poem and was taught it in college I was excited. I just thought, This is really changing my world. How do you react to it? Do you like it? >> Not especially.I guess I just don't buy imagism as a an >> As a practice to begin with. Mostly because here the apparition of these faces. The people who are actually sort of the core and the referrum of this poem are more tenuous than the image that's used to describe them. It displaces the realness and the reality of this poem from it's actual content to the metaphor which is supposed to capture it. And maybe that's intentional. Maybe all we really can claim from our own sensory experience is our own very subjective perception of it. But I just think it falls apart when people are apparitions and the actual apparition, which is an impression of them, become concrete and static and Well there you go. Emily Harnett versus Ezra Pound. Definitely equal opponents. [LAUGH]
