Note: The following paper, written for a course in Rhetorical Theory, first appeared as a presentation in the Graduate Seminar of the Southern California Writing Program Administrators' Conference. Copyright 1996, 2005 by S. Jacques Stratton.
Poetry, as written communication, offers potentially either the most rigid or loose of forms for conveying a message to an audience. Rigid poetic forms, such as sonnets, limericks, and epics, impose on the reader an expectation of convention. Alternatively, poetry known as "free verse" shows little concern for formal matters. It may lack a rhyme scheme, dance to a haphazard rhythm, and, visually, demonstrate an ignorance of margins or consistently delineated white space. The poetry known as "Western" or "American" haiku straddles the border between forms. Though writers of Western haiku need not adhere to conventions of meter and rhyme, the philosophy of the form severely constrains the expression of thought. In general, haiku conforms to an ideological premise: simple, precise imagery provides a communion between man and nature. This premise, which provides haiku a focus, also creates ambiguity. We do not know the intent of the poet, but only the suggestions of meaning that the poet's imagery brings to our minds. Because of its ambiguity and concise nature, haiku presents an interesting situation to the critic. Kenneth Burke's assertion, that "form in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of desires," offers little guidance for exploring haiku. In the space of a few short lines, a haiku arouses much but seemingly fulfills little. Since Burke also asserts in "The Nature of Form" that correct form provides fulfillment, the question arises about the "correctness" of haiku form, at least as it pertains to a Western audience generally unfamiliar with haiku philosophy.
One of the most widely anthologized haiku-type poems in American literature is Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." Although some claim that the imagist poets, a group which included Pound, did not fully understand the haiku, the poem deserves consideration as such because, like haiku, its central concern involves the presentation of an image which ambiguates rather than clarifies meaning. The immediacy of the image confronts the reader no matter how we categorize the poem:
The Apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough
The image, like the poem itself, exemplifies simplicity, at least upon cursory examination. On a surface level, then, Pound achieve successful form, both as an imagist interested in presenting an abstract idea as a simple object and as a writer of haiku who seeks to relate man to the natural world through simple imagery. Yet questions arise, as the poem encourages further thought. What significance do we grant to the word "apparition?" Does Pound mean how the faces appeared, or that they projected a ghostlike quality? Do we attribute the wetness of the bough to a gentle summer rain or a sudden winter storm? The poem provides no clarification, resulting in divergent possible meanings. The poem provides no "summary statement," and the Western mind, used to a heritage of prose and poetry whose forms require the implied or explicit inclusion of such statements, remains unfulfilled.
Literature courses, particularly those which examine the modernist aesthetic, laud the poem as an example of effective imagery, not only for the wording itself but because the image asserts a powerful, negative symbol about the results of industrialism. The word "apparition" suggests the ghostlike, transitory nature of modern life, for which the metro station provides a representative setting. The petals, to which the faces in the first line relate, symbolize humanity, cast away from its moorings by the storm of industrial technology. Arranged against this view rise critics who, bolstered by a published interview of Pound, argue that the poem actually conveys a positive sentiment, despite the negative Modernist themes underlying much of Pound's work. These critics argue that the word "apparition" simply denotes an appearance, suddenly and unexpectedly, of beauty, indicated by the image of petals in an otherwise tempestuous, frantic crowd. The idea: beauty still exists in spite of the forces that might suppress it. These views and their variations represent a sizeable portion of criticism on the subject. The reader need not choose between them, but rather consider how the poem leads to ambiguity and divergent interpretations. Haiku provides a form that allows us to experience the image, but not to confidently assess its implications. In a sense, the form of the haiku teases us, arousing our curiosity, but leaving it without a definitive answer.
The idea that a poem could tease in such a manner offers an interesting path for exploration. Encountering a sonnet, we expect and find gratification in completing fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Encountering an epic, we expect and find gratification in the listing and description of forces, as in "Paradise Lost," and the narration of saga, as in the "Iliad." But the form of an American haiku seems strange by comparison. No meter or rhyme scheme drives the diction, no listing or narration sets the scene; we find only the need to relate man and nature through a simple image. Specifically, Pound teases us by meeting this need while simultaneously implying something more. He creates a rhyme scheme by ending each line of the poem with the same dipthong, and incorporates into the poem's underlying structure an element of prose. These features imply a type of form that Kenneth Burke calls "progressive," yet Pound uses them in a way that breaks the progressive form. The rhyming establishes progressive form by making the reader expect an alteration later on. The underlying structure of the poem follows that of a prose sentence, with main and subordinate clauses ("in a station of the Metro, there was an apparition of faces in the crowd, which seemed like petals on a wet, black bough"), and yet Pound, through the omission of verbs (none exist in the entire poem) offers the entire piece as a noun phrase, leaving us without the progression that a corresponding verb phrase would provide. Finally, the lack of summary statement proves defamiliarizing to our expectations of prose, which we expect to assert a topic and then substantiate it. While the defamiliarization provided by these features allows the poems image to have greater impact, it leaves us ungratified. The poem thwarts the very form it seeks to project.
The assertion that Pound establishes a progressive form while simultaneously breaking it has implications for our understanding of the poem's rhetorical quality. If the poem simply provides a sentence reduced to a noun phrase, then we must conclude that no doing takes place. As Burke says, "if one, for instance, enters a room and says simply, 'The man. . .' unless the auditor knows enough about the man to finish the sentence in his own thoughts, his spontaneous rejoinder will be, 'The man what?' A naming must be completed by a doing, either explicit or implicit." Through "In a Station of the Metro," Pound the poet acts like the man in Burke's statement, naming without completing. We naturally respond by asking "what about the apparition of those faces? Why are they like petals on a wet, black bough?" The more such questions reverberate, the more we wonder if the poem's form serves its intent.
And yet the success of the poem as an imagistic expression, the power of its defamiliarizing technique, and the aura that surrounds it as a widely anthologized piece of literature, combine to shield "In a Station of the Metro" from serious questions about the correctness of form. After all, we must concede the possibility that Pound intended ambiguity. If so, the form succeeds admirably. The debate then shifts to questions about the ability of the Western mind to process rhetorical acts that limit themselves to naming but not completing.
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