The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams’ Poem XXII, or “The Red Wheelbarrow” as it has come to be known, is one of the most familiar and least understood poems of the 20th-century American literary canon. It is at once inviting and uncomplicated in its presentation (16 words, a single sentence) and yet intricate and intimidating in its implications, not so much about what it says (it juxtaposes simple objects—a wheelbarrow and some chickens) as about what it suggests, a profound meditation on the function of the imagination, the responsibility of the artist, the sonic impact of words, and the complex nature of nature itself. Published in Williams’ 1923 collection called Spring and All, the poem celebrates the delight in the open eye engaging the immediate world and finding among its teeming neutral objects a moment when those same neutral objects unexpectedly spark to life and speak to the poet. The poem, despite (or perhaps because of) its Zen-like simplicity, has become a staple in anthologies and has sparked intense debate over the meaning. Detractors of the poem point out that the elaborate interpretations inspired by such an evidently simple poem reveal the flaw in overthinking literature into meaning, rather than relaxing into its invitation to enjoy the world.

Poet Biography

William Carlos Williams was born September 17, 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey, about 20 minutes from Manhattan. Early on a voracious reader, Williams committed his education to the sciences, completing a medical degree at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There he met Ezra Pound, himself a struggling poet and student of languages who was beginning to appreciate the opportunities to reinvent literature offered by the movement, self-styled as Modernism, that was sweeping Europe. Even as Williams returned to Rutherford and began what would be a nearly 40-year career as a physician, specializing in pediatric care, he began experimenting with his perception of poetry. He was inspired both by the revolutionary manifestos of Modernism and his own fascination with the poetry of fellow New Jerseyite Walt Whitman, a towering figure in the liberation of American literature from European models.

Williams’ poetry was published in limited circulation magazines and chapbooks to a small but enthusiastic readership. He celebrated distinctly American subjects in a verse line that reflected the language patterns and subtle music of conversational American English. His poetry defied the use of the metrical freedoms of Modernism that moved poetry into what he saw as increasingly esoteric experiments that alienated rather than invited readers in. His poetry, influenced by the guerilla movement known as Imagism, led in part by Pound himself, rejected the notion that poetry tangle with complex ideas and philosophical abstracts (Williams was particularly put off by the widespread critical praise that greeted T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land). Rather, poetry should embrace the world about the poet and share that enthusiasm and near-spiritual sense of its vitality in poems that stripped lines down to critical simplicity and used subtle sonic dynamics to create a compelling auditory effect.

Few of his patients even knew Williams was a published poet. Although Williams enjoyed a long career as a poet, his work would wait until the late 1950s and the Beat movement to find an appreciative audience. That generation found a profound influence in Williams’ gentle and unaffected joy in the delights of the world and his meticulous crafting of each line. His work was recognized with the Pulitzer Prize just months before his death on March 4, 1963.

Poem Text

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Williams, William Carlos. “The Red Wheelbarrow.” 1923. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

It is hard to imagine a poem in the entire American literary canon simpler to summarize than Williams’ Poem XXII: There is an ordinary red wheelbarrow, still wet from recent rain, and there are white chickens. The poem is a snapshot from an otherwise neutral landscape. There is no authorial frame that defines any narrative context, no story, no characters, and no conflict. The poet shares no intrusive sense of himself or why he is looking at these objects. Nor does he share why these objects speak to him. He drops the image, and then he closes the poem, inviting the image to speak to the reader, or not.

The poem is not concerned with providing a definitive backdrop, locating the poem in a setting for instance, or a time of day, or a season, or any time-space context. The captured image matters for reasons that the reader obviously cannot share. The opening line, the three words “so much depends” (Line 1), appears to freight the objects with unspecified import, the expectation that the poet will explain that apparent urgency. What the poem provides, however, makes ironic that need and renders comic that yearning. The poem asks whether an image can simply be instead of symbolizing something deeper.

The summary then even defies the expectations of a summary. Any summary of the poem involves more words than the 16 words that make up the poem. The poem is actually a spare single sentence broken into four tidy couplets. The image at once baffles but slowly intrigues as the reader is invited not to provide an interpretive context for the objects. The poem invites the reader to relax into a moment when the world speaks to the imagination—when a random collection of objects, its angles, its colors, its shapes, momentarily and inexplicably lingers in the mind’s eye. If we could freeze the world that goes by so quickly and frame any moment like a painting that we could study, then the world’s unsuspected richness would unfold. The poem in its brevity suggests the ephemeral nature of that reaction and how quickly the world collapses back into neutrality and the eye surrenders to complacency and dullness. In fact, chickens will move away and traces of rain will soon evaporate. Thus, the fragile-looking poem does what nature cannot do: preserve its own rich, uncomplicated beauty.