Point of View

"In a Station of the Metro" is told from the implied first-person point of view of Pound himself. He recounts a moment on the metro in which he disassociates from his surroundings and equates the faces he sees to "Petals on a wet, black bough" (2). The poem's dramatic shift and abrupt ending make this point of view as arresting as it is mysterious. Pound offers readers no verbs, no personal declarations, no true information about who he is, where he is going, or why he thought about a blossoming tree on a busy metro station. And yet, despite the lack of context and the strikingly short lines, the poem still manages to cultivate a sense of deep intimacy.

Because the first setting presented to readers is the setting of the metro, readers can safely assume that this is the "real" setting of the poem, i...