Where do I start with a poem like Ezra Pound's 'In A Station of the Metro'?

When faced with a poem that challenges our very conceptions of what 'the poem' should look like, one should feel excitement as opposed to fear. It need hardly be said that Pound's central Imagist poem is one of extreme brevity, but we should consider what it means to be brief whilst participating in a culture of such expected verbosity, this expectation being particularly potent amongst writers from within the Modernist tradition. With Imagism, one must make attempts only to see, initially, only what is there: in this case, two contrary images. The evocation of an anti-tradition can be noted later. We must not put in ideas that Pound does not offer us. The question 'what does this poem mean' is then perhaps most easily answered when faced with an Imagist work, for writers of these poems mean exactly what they say, and Imagistic writers often attempt to disect technical poetic intention from the acts of writing so to create a more 'accurate' expression of a particular scene. When one is familiar with what is there, they can begin to consider what isn't, and why this is important. The reader of this poem will notice initially the oddity that is the counterpoint between "the apparition of these faces in the crowd" and "petals on a wet, black bough." We must, with no easy answer here to intention, instead interrogate everything Pound offers us. We are in the Metro, and so what would petals be doing here? Is it a mere metaphor, a simile? Not quite either of these. Two unrelated images that softly weave into one another. If we are to suppose them linked, are we to imagine petals as being the metaphorical image, or the faces? Which reminds Pound of which? Does it matter? The starting place can only be the words. Rather than airing surprise and discomfort at the opposition, one must read this poem as intentionally discordant. Pound seems to be making some point as to the the Modernist condition; the increasing mechanisation of early twentieth century society leaves one with the luscious imagery of the nineteenth century to express a world that has left it behind. It seems in this sense a poem of deep sadness and alienation from both of the literary traditions it evokes. Pound is also playing games with us here insofar as his use of 'space' challenges the increasing mechanisation of poetry in the Modernist epoch. The 'spaces' used in-between Pound's short phrases serve to reflect an experience outside of ordinary textual expression; this poem's initial composition on a typewriter enables the value of 'one space' to be broken apart, and Pound's excessive use of this very space brings the focus back into a sort of handwritten, analogue epoch, all the while discussing the very real digitalisation of society during Pound's life. The comma here is also ridiculed; the breathing space it offers feels restrictive in bizarre new ways when it is followed by a space like that between "black" and "bough". Pound is setting alight notions of poetic expectation all over this very brief poem, and one must celebrate what there is to say in these politics as opposed to reading it through a classical lens. Language really is only the start of a poem like this. Punctuation, context, absence of traditional form; these features, amongst others, are exactly what makes Imagism so desperately fascinating.