The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form

The poem is a single sentence divided into four unrhymed couplets; the first line of each couplet has three words, and the second line of each couplet has a single word. Given the fragmentary look of the poem and the generous use of white space, the form is inviting and unintimidating. The form creates a feeling of calm and encourages lingering over the words themselves. There is no capitalization to mark the beginning of the sentence, no urgent rush to a period at the end; thus, the form suggests the image itself is suspended within the eternal present of a sentence that has no beginning and no end.

The form is a variation on the ancient Japanese tradition of the haiku, a brief poem that uses as its subject some intoxicating image pulled from nature. Like Williams’ poem, the haiku provides no context and does not compel the image captured to mean more than what it is, a gorgeous something snatched from an otherwise neutral landscape. The tone of a haiku, thus, is detached and subjective. Williams plays with the haiku’s traditional 17 syllables (the poem has 22 syllables) but maintains its tone and formal appearance.

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What Williams achieves through this reimagination of form reflects the larger theme of the poem: how to repurpose the world around us into art. This poem is a straightforward sentence: “So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.” However, reconstruct that sentence into Williams’ form—redecorate it using patterns of syllables and original spacing—and the simple sentence transcends to the tone and heft of poetry.

Meter

By traditional metrics—both the manipulation of syllables to create a beat when the poem is read aloud and the collision of similar sounds to create patterns of rhyme—Poem XXII has no meter. It is a sentence. However, within Williams’ manipulation of words in that sentence, the poem achieves a subtle rhythm that creates the tone of a poem.

The most obvious pattern is in the number of words per line, alternating within the couples from three to two. The word “wheelbarrow” is itself split between two lines, compelling the reader to linger over the split. Each line plays on the metric concept of enjambment in which the poet manipulates (or, in this case, avoids) end punctuation. When the poet adds “water” to the rain, the effect creates a similar pause for the reader to linger over those open vowels and let the airy “w” create tempo rather than the harsh cacophony of rhythm. Each line slows down through the quiet energy of the letters “s” and “z”; the long vowels; and the hard consonants (“p,” “d”, and “k”) that then chop the lines. The meter invites the reader to pause, which, for the poet, is the necessary first step in embracing the simple wonders of the world itself.

Voice

The simplest response to the poem is that there is no voice. There is no conversation dynamic, and there is no setting that might suggest what gave rise to the observation. The delivery, rich with sonic manipulations and word play, is nevertheless objective. To give the poem a specific voice would be to compromise the premise of the poem itself—to present the image without commentary. The voice, then, is at once serious and subversive, both elevated and comic. The poem can be read with elegant seriousness and then with jovial, even snarky irony. In this the voice captures the desperate optimism of Williams’ imagism—in the end, all we have is a wheelbarrow and chickens, and that will suffice.