poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

"A poem should not mean, but be", as somebody somewhere once said. I'm not entirely sure that the quote says quite what it means, or means quite what it says - words being notoriously treacherous things - but i do think it is something worth thinking about.

for me, a poem's meaning/being/poetry/whatever - like a song's - comes through as much in its shape and sounds as in the dictionary definitions and historical references of the words used. like pullman complaining that english class with its dogma of similes and metaphors and iambic pentameter teaches us to decode rather than appreciate poetry (consequently removing the actual *poetry* from the experience - besides which, what is the point in trying to decode a poem's meaning when the poem IS the meaning?) i would press for a more intuitive relationship to this poem - or any other good poem, for that matter.

i feel that the person who complained that this is not poetry because it does not communicate is missing the point somewhat: what they must mean is that it does seem to offer moral instruction, personal feeling, coherent narrative or philosophical argument (i would argue that it offers all of these things, but i'm aware this post is becoming lengthy).

there is a point at which one stops thinking of poems as good or bad - either they are poetry, or they are not. this is poetry. see what new roads it can lead you to; see what new thoughts it can ignite - and, if you like, explore them. talk about them.

or, if you prefer, just look at the words and hear the sounds, as i do.

It is about causation, if the wheelbarrow was hanging on the wall in the barn, the world would turn out differently. apparently the author thought it was in a good place.

his poems are short but best with full of images like red wheel barrow, and i like to go through his poems on whatever topics he has written.

one of the central ideas, in the opinion of this poet/student of life, of the modernists was to concern themselves more with things, not ideas. Williams defines this and serves the aesthetic of the romantics a proverbial slap in the face...check out Ezra Pound for some clarification. dig it. may not be on the money in your world, but makes sense in mine.

I was always under the impression that it had just stopped raining. The word 'glazed' implies some sort of stagnance. The wheel barrow is glazed with the rain water that has stopped falling, but it and everything else in this pastoral setting is still clean with the recently fallen rain. The wheelbarrow is clean, the white chickens are pristine in the sun that has just emerged. Its not the chickens that depend on the wheel barrow (whoever said that), it's the people that live on the land. They are most likely subsistence farmers with just a simple small field they tend to and the chickens that give them eggs. Everything these people have depends on the wheel barrow, but even more so on the man who uses it.

beauty is in being. a lone autumn leaf on a green grass. a solitary tree on a tuscan hill. a smile on a child. wrinkles on my mother. beauty is all around us and everything depends on being able to see it.

This poem IS the red wheelbarrow, and so everything exists on the red wheelbarrow. Without it there is no imagery. The chickens perhaps but chickens are hardly a poem.

The wheelbarrow exists in order to help provide an explanation for why the poem exists, and the poem exists for no other reason that to justify itself.

Pretty lame in my opinion, but then again, it DOES exists so I guess it succeeded.

This poem is so much more than what it appears to be. The rainwater symbolizes all the hardships in life. The white chickens are the naive people that do nothing with their lives. They don’t try to change the world for the better, and are therefore cowards in WCWs eyes because they're just throwing away their lives, lives that don’t have any meaning. The red wheelbarrow cannot go anywhere without its wheel (hence the importance of it) and the red represents the strength and courage that one needs in life in order to deal with problems (rainwater).

This poem is so much more than what it appears to be. The rainwater symbolizes all the hardships in life. The white chickens are the naive people that do nothing with their lives. They don’t try to change the world for the better, and are therefore cowards in WCWs eyes because they're just throwing away their lives, lives that don’t have any meaning. The red wheelbarrow cannot go anywhere without its wheel (hence the importance of it) and the red represents the strength and courage that one needs in life in order to deal with problems (rainwater).

As a canadian reading this poem for the first time, it screamed America to me. So much depends on you, the red white and blue. Even more so now. WCW was a genius!