Red Wheelbarrow' William Carlos Williams Essay

684).

Arguably the first line in which Williams introduces an aesthetic sensation, "glazed with rain water" lends itself to a bit of a play on words. Water is redundant after the word rain, but rain modifies water as well. Easterbrook writes of Williams as being a poet unique in his ability to "present imagistic pictures." The whole poem "The Red Wheelbarrow," the title itself, and the line "glazed with rain water" presents a reader with "a miniature painting" (1994,p. 27). a.K. Weatherhead wrote in 1967 of Williams' characteristic Imagism, and his subsequent well-established influence on the said historical poetic movement (as cited in Easterbrook, 1994, p. 29-30), that was attributed to Williams' contrived attention to "thinginess," to objects named -- the wheel barrow, the glaze, the rain, the water, et al. "Glaze-ness," for example, is not merely a quality of the rain or the wheelbarrow, but exists independently in "Platonic forms"; that is, Williams successfully and succinctly presents objects for our full perusal. We see how it looks or feels; we see through Williams' words the objects anew "in their [own] sharp contours" (Easterbrook, 1994, p. 30).

Williams' ability to seamlessly create a vivid picture in the minds of readers is extant in the last line "beside the white chickens." Our first mental impression as readers is that of a red wheelbarrow, and all that red entails: passion, anger, and perhaps love; to the contrast of "white" chickens in the last line. White usually denotes purity and cleanliness -- in juxtaposition to chickens in general -- and other saintly attributes.Contrast this image with the working class wheelbarrow, and perhaps with the Marshall of Williams' later musings on his poem (Rizzo, 2005, p. 35), and we have a particularly succinct poem rich with ambiance and cultural meaning. Morgan (1947) explains that not only does Williams employ expert use of color, but of an object itself, having enough "weight" to capture a "snapshot in time" (p. 676). A wheelbarrow "beside the white chickens" no doubt conjures for many exactly what it was: a temporal farm, a snapshot of Americana.

In conclusion, no doubt this poem will continue rightfully to be a supreme example of what has become traditional American Imaginistic poetry. Where a few simple words speak volumes, where customary objects are exemplified into tangible forces vis-a-vis the power of words, Williams' brief but timeless work reigns. Williams himself, having been called the "master of the glimpse" (Rizzo, 2005, p. 36), avers he doesn't remember many of his poems "except a brief, very brief one, 'The Red Wheelbarrow'" (Rizzo, 2005, p. 36). Despite the poem's brevity -- or perhaps because of it -- the then-emerging and relatively novel American art of literary Imagism and Objectivism is best displayed by an ordinary sentence about an commonplace wheelbarrow artfully transformed into an iconic poem.

References

Rizzo, S. (2005). Remembering Race: Extra-Poetical Contexts and the Racial Other in "The Red Wheelbarrow." Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 29 (No. 1), 34-54.

Easterbrook, N. (1994).….....