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Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos (c. 1917–1962).

Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses.

Angered by the carnage of World War I, Pound blamed the war on finance capitalism, which he called "usury". He moved to Italy in 1924 and through the 1930s and 1940s promoted an economic theory known as social credit, wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, embraced Benito Mussolini's fascism, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. During World War II and the Holocaust in Italy, he made hundreds of paid radio broadcasts for the Italian government, including in German-occupied Italy, attacking the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Britain, international finance, munitions makers and mongers, and Jews, among others, as causes, abettors and prolongers of the world war, as a result of which he was arrested in 1945 by American forces in Italy on charges of treason. He spent months in a U.S. military camp in Pisa, including three weeks in an outdoor steel cage. Deemed unfit to stand trial, he was incarcerated in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., for over 12 years.

While in custody in Italy, Pound began work on sections of The Cantos that were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the Library of Congress, causing enormous controversy. After a campaign by his fellow writers, he was released from St. Elizabeths in 1958 and lived in Italy until his death in 1972. His economic and political views have ensured that his life and work remain controversial.

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‘In a Station of the Metro’ by Ezra Pound  is a short and very much to-the-point poem, and is also notable for not containing any verbs, creating a true rarity in the realm of written works.

As I previously mentioned, one of the most striking elements of In the Station of a Metro is that it is written entirely without verbs. The poem is instead formed by combining two sentence fragments, each with a subject, but without an action, for that subject to perform. Needless to say, it can be very difficult to write without using action words, but this style does achieve one thing especially well: it captures a moment in time.

With only fourteen words used throughout ‘In a Station of the Metro’, it stands to reason that each one was chosen specifically for one particular conveyed image. For example, the word “apparition” in the first line suggests the nature of traveling in a crowd — it is a fleeting action, so much so that people seem like ghosts to the observer. In one moment, there is a face, as clear as can be, and in the next, it is gone, and likely will never be remembered by the mind. They are apparitions, in one place for one moment, and then gone forever in the next.

In the following image, the observer views “petals on a wet, black bough,” which is to say they are looking at the leaves of a tree, likely following rainfall. In this image, the reader is presented with the idea of small, fleeting, and weak elements of beauty within the natural world. It is difficult to describe the feeling of appreciation of a transient natural phenomenon, which is likely why Pound chose this particular image — to stand in for a feeling that can’t be easily described.

The first image of ‘In a Station of the Metro’ is entirely constructed by humans, and the second one is entirely a phenomenon of the natural world. The relationship between the two ideas is an abstract one, but by pairing them together, Pound seems to be suggesting that there is that specific kind of beauty in the station of a metro, and that the fleeting apparitions of people drifting through is no different than the wilting nature of a petal stuck to a wet tree. The petal weathers, the petal is rained on, and eventually, that petal wilts and dies, just like each person entering and leaving the view of the author.

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Reminiscent of other poems such as ‘In a Station of the Metro,’ ‘L’Art’ is a memorable short poem that expresses all the tenants of the imagist movement. In the piece Pound taps into themes of life, death, art, and beauty. The tone is direct and enthusiastic, which taken into consideration alongside the imagery, creates an uneasy mood as the reader is unsure what they should make of the images Pound is painting with his words.

Imagism was a literary movement of the early 20th century. The proponents and participants were interested in the use of precise imagery and clear language. Imagists rejected the sentimental themes and traditional styles of Romantic and Georgian poets. The powerful and strikingly clear imagery in this piece is a great example of what this type of writing can accomplish.

In the two lines of ‘L’Art’ the speaker describes a striking sight, that of green arsenic on a white cloth and crushed strawberries. Due to the length of the poem each word is of the utmost importance. A reader should consider the implications associated with arsenic, the colors green and red, together and separately, as well as the clear comparison being drawn between poison and fruit.

The most important poetic techniques in 'L'Art' are imagery, juxtaposition, and alliteration.

Juxtaposition is used in this poem through the placing of two contrasting things near one another in order to emphasize that contrast. A poet usually does this in order to emphasize a larger theme of their text or make an important point about the differences between these two things. In this case, juxtaposition is used to emphasize the magmas themselves. By putting the bright green on the white cloth and the red strawberries in the second line following the “Green arsenic” the poet is painting an image of contrasts in the reader’s mind. One should also consider the contrast between the sweet, delicious strawberries, and the poisonous green arsenic.

Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same sound. For example, “egg” and “eyes” and “cloth” and “crushed”.

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,

In the first line of ‘L’Art’ the speaker begins by introducing arsenic. It is a highly poisonous naturally occurring element that is widely distributed throughout the world. It is commonly used as a poison and it can also be used as a green dye, something that was done during the Victorian period and inevitably led to death through periods of prolonged exposure. The color green is placed on the “egg-white cloth”. It stands out there, as it’s meant to. The image should capture the reader’s attention for its purity and obvious implications.

The reader can take their time and read deeply into each one of these lines. There are numerous questions one might ask, especially considering the title. Is the arsenic there for a purpose? Is it there simply for the artistic beauty of green on white, contrasted with red in the next line?

Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

In the second line of ‘L’Art’ the speaker uses juxtaposition to place the color read, the opposite of green, next to it. There are “Crushed strawberries!” the speaker exclaims. The excitement in this line is clear with the use of an exclamation mark. The speaker does not say that “we” need to eat the strawberries or, thankfully, the arsenic. We should instead “feast our eyes” on them. We should enjoy the sight of the two colors and two very different items in conversation.

Pound is asking the reader to consider the value in the contrast and the juxtaposition. It should foster in the reader a reaction similar to that one has upon seeing a beautiful work of art.