Essay on "Red Wheelbarrow' William Carlos Williams"

Essay 3 pages (1041 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Red Wheelbarrow'

William Carlos Williams

That William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" is an Imagism benchmark poem in the annals American poetry is evidenced by its constant pedagogical repetition in scholarly circles, almost to the point of becoming trite (Easterbrook, 1994). The Imagist poetic movement, just ten years in the making at the time of Williams' 1923 poem, seemingly culminated with this one single, simple yet complex work. Williams' and the Imagists' intent was to simultaneously bring out the beauty and dual meanings of ordinary things, as in this case a red wheelbarrow. Given the poem's brevity, the then-emerging practice of poetic Imagism and Objectivism is nonetheless supremely displayed by transforming an ordinary wheelbarrow not as a container for hauling dirt or flowers but rather into a stark metaphor via an objects' color and texture into commentary on early American 20th century race and rural life.

The opening line of the poem insists on our attention. As it is, "so much depends" can be found in almost every compendium of American poetry as the example of Imagism. Indeed, the rest of the poem depends so much upon its opening line. Easterbrook adds that it appears also as often as an example of how a simple metrical pattern determines a poem's meaning by isolating a word on a page. Typically referred to as a "specimen poem," Williams' work is upheld as a prime example of pure, unadulterated verbiage, a poem so simple it must be re-examined for its deceptive singular message (Easterbrook, 1994, p. 26-27). And so begins the simple poem which demands we read the rest to ascertain upon which so much depends.

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