T. S. Eliot’s Poetry

Eliot came to prominence in large part due to the mentorship he received from Ezra Pound. Indeed, Pound served as the editor for Eliot’s landmark 1922 poem, The Waste Land. Eliot was deeply influenced by Pound’s aesthetic philosophy, and he even dedicated The Waste Land to Pound, whom he designated, quoting Dante, “il miglior fabbro” (the superior craftsman).

William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just to Say”

Both Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams were involved with the short-lived but influential Imagism movement, of which “This is Just to Say” is a particularly famous and widely read example.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Although Virginia Woolf wrote fiction rather than poetry, she shared Pound’s boredom with established literary forms as well as his verve for experimentation. She played with form in many of her novels, but perhaps the most interesting novel to link to “In a Station of the Metro” is Mrs. Dalloway, which features a similar interest in the experience of time as the titular protagonist passes through an urban environment.