“The Red Wheelbarrow” is arguably Williams’ most famous work, remaining an icon in American poetry to this day. In order to better understand the progressive nature of this poem, a precursor should be analyzed alongside it: Orrick Johns’ “Blue Under-Shirts Upon a Line.” Mark Hama notes that “Williams most certainly would have been generally familiar with Johns’s work and specifically with his ideologically and aesthetically provocative “Blue Under-Shirts” at, and likely even before, its publication” (Hama 168). Johns’ poem reads as follows:
“Blue undershirts
Upon a line,
It is not necessary to say to you
Anything about it—
What they do,
What they might do . . . blue undershirts” (Hama 169)
On the page, these poems look very similar and even deal with similar everyday items. Though these two have “parallels in the use of central primary colors and working class objects, together with the prominent use of “upon” in the two poems,” they differ drastically in effect.
Williams develops his image as the poem progresses, building anticipation at the beginning with “so much depends / upon” (Williams 1-2) that is gratified by the end with the revealing of the “red wheelbarrow,” “rain water,” and “white chickens.” However, “Johns begins with the concrete image and then fades into abstraction, before returning anticlimactically to the same image, no further developed, at the poem’s end” (Hama 176).
Williams engages the mind’s eye of his audience by employing vivid and bright colors of “red” and “white,” and giving the poem further dimension through the tactile, “glazed / with rain water” (Williams 5-6). His carful, climactic crafting ensures that “by the poem’s end, the reader is left with the now fully developed image, devoid of commentary” (Hama 178). Williams further enhances the image through the structure of the poem itself. The lines,
“a red wheel
barrow” (Williams 3-4)
resemble the structure of a wheelbarrow in and of themselves. In his poem, “Descent,” Williams also crafted the poem’s descending lines to mimic the title. Bruce Holsapple writes, “Williams’ work … originates in sight, not sound, in a visual pattern against which the aural dimension must assert itself … the poem thus becomes a ‘pictogram’” (Holsapple 128). Williams inventive use of form “made the reader aware at a glance that the words on the page were not to be confused with the things they referred to but were the things themselves” (Halter 182). While meeting every requirement for Pound’s imagism, Williams pushes beyond through his completely objective yet climactic presentation and by creating a new dimension to poetry’s visual impact.
Williams uses no unnecessary word in “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and I have matched the poem’s intention by drawing no unnecessary object. David Perkins observes that “‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ suspended a few images in no context, like a mobile sculpture” (Perkins 252). I have left the rain-glazed wheelbarrow and chickens “suspended” without even a shadow to anchor them. I made this decision in order to convey the undefined nature of this poem’s setting which can be interpreted as many ways as there are people. The wheelbarrow has been drawn from a side angle that mimics the way Williams’s poem looks on the page.
Works Cited:
Halter, Peter. “The Revolution in the Visual Arts and the Poetry of William Carlos Williams (Book, 1994) [WorldCat.org].” WorldCat.org: The World’s Largest Library Catalog. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
Hama, Mark. 2010. “Blue Under-Shirts Upon a Line”: Orrick Johns and the Genesis of William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow.” College Literature 37, no. 3: 167-182. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16, 2016).
Perkins, David. “The Impact of William Carlos Williams.” A History of Modern Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1976. 246-75. Print.
The Red Wheelbarrow is a famous poem, presumably with some “hidden meaning”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Wheelbarrow
Here is my own explication via transliteration.
so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens.
I think it means:
so much depends upon
ONE MAN
AS the CORPOREALIZATION OF the MESSIAH
therefore, SING, LET US REJOICE FOR the SON
Here’s why. Using @ = aleph, KH = het, kh = khaf, 3 = aiyin, a: = vowel “aye”
and [T] for the ancient sound of the shin
wheelbarrow = KHaDoFeN < Aramaic KHaD = one + @oFeN = wheel.
red wheelbarrow = KHaDoFeN @aDoM
KHaD BeN-@aDaM = one + man/human/person
rain water = Ma:-GeSHeM. Glazed = Z'khookhi.
with rainwater glazed = B'Ma:GeSHeM Z' khookhi
B'MaGSHiM MaSHiaKH = as [the] corporealization of + [the] Messiah
Beside the = 3aL YaD Ha-
3aL YaDa: Ha- = by means of, through; because of [this]
white chickens = TaRNaGoLoT LaVaN
[T]aR NaGiLaT LaBeN = sing, let us rejoice + for [the] son
Did Williams do this with conscious intent?
Did Williams know enough Hebrew to implement this process?
If this poem were written by Lewis Carroll, I would say "yes". Carroll was fluent in all of the languages mentioned in The Hunting of the Snark.
Williams’ mother was a Puerto Rican woman of French Basque and Dutch Jewish descent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams
Perhaps he learned some Hebrew from his mother?
Perhaps he “engineered” this poem by doing the exact opposite of what I did?
Israel "izzy" Cohen
Petah Tikva, Israel
LikeLike
For what it’s worth, you haven’t quoted Bruce Holsapple (above) but from Henry Sayre writing on Williams in “The Visual Text of William Carlos Williams.” I know from the horse’s mouth that Holsapple actually argues against Sayre’s position.
LikeLike
[…] connection between the two poems was first pointed out by Mark Hanna in a scholarly paper in 2010. Alas, that paper doesn’t seem to be accessible to me, but Hanna has this poetry explorer’s […]
LikeLike