Reading 1: Ezra Pound and Raymond Carver

Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year, by Carver, is a poem of three "Quintrains" (sets of five lines rather than four, quatrain). It is much harder to describe this than Pound's because it is longer and seemingly more obvious. The poem is in the first-person, in October in a kitchen that he describes as unfamiliar probably to contrast his familiarity with the way his father is in the picture that makes up the rest of the poem. He goes on to describe the look on his fathers face, what is in the hands and what he is wearing. The setting of the scene is of little importance, mentioning only the Ford that Carver's father is posing with. The setting isn't important, it is only the feeling invoked by seeing his father that matter. He mentions alcohol twice in the poem, the first time in his dad's hands, the second, comparing to his own trouble with the liquid. He loves his father but realizes that he was only human back then, making mistakes and struggling.

You can find the poem at http://www.agonia.net/index.php/poetry/67809/

In a Station of the Metro, written by Pound in 1913, is a mere 2 lines of 14 letters (not counting the title, which adds as much to the explanation as the two lines). With no rhyme scheme or rhythm of note, is known as a "imagist" poem (thanks Wikipedia).

The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The first line, to me, is about the focus his eyes put on the faces flying by him inside the overcrowded station. The second line goes on to metaphorically describe these faces, describing how he feels about each individual, a mere leaf on the black branch of a tree. I'm not sure how wet metaphors but the black, a typically negative color, is used to describe the uncomfort or the darkness caused by the flood of people.