poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

I was told by my english professor that this poem is about one of his dying patients who was bedridden and the image described is the view outside her window. So much depends on it because this is her last vision of the outside world.

By saying "No ideas but things" he ment he writes about what he sees and does not about the smae things everyone else writes about he was an artist first and artist look at things not think of things..so obviously you dont know what your talking about and anyone can write what they want to on a poem its what they get out of it. Thats why its called art work genius

In my English class we have been analyzing and teaching poems. This was one of them.

Supposedly the wheelbarrow represents the working class.

The glazed with rain represents the sweat and the tears of the working class.

The white colored chickens represent the people in charge/ the wealthy

And I believe we were told that the theme is the oppression of people, but I'm not entirely sure on that,

Now, I can't get this straight. This poem is so short! What it the REAL meaning about this. Its another poem that William makes o make your own ideas finish it. It could simply be about howw a simple wheelbarow ties the whole picture together as a nature or country theme. But i could also see t ass a message that a simple thing as a reed wheelbarrow has a great effect on things! A simple wheelbarrow and chickens scratching around could have the relaxing effect, if you really think about it. Although poems like these don't attract me, i have to say, poems like these are what made him famouse in the first place! He can do these things with peotry that me and a lot of other people can't!

I feel this poem is taken much more seriously than it should be. It isn't a particually deep poem, in my opinion. I have wracked my brain for quite some time, and yet I still don't see anything about life in this poem. I think this poem was meant to make people think, not so much about what the author wants you to interpret from the poem, but more of what you already know and feel about life. That's just my opinion.

This poem shouldn't beconsidered a poem. I did research on this poem for over 3 hours and it still doesn't make but a wee bit of sense to me.

technically, anyone can write something as good/bad as this.

all you have to do is pull numerous words/phrases out of a dictionary/your lexicon and place them down.

its up to you to assign meaning to them.


given infinate time, 100 monkeys with typewriters could preduce the works of any great artist, even down to shakespeare.

hey u guys thanx 4 all the wonderful comments! on the other site i looked at everyone was fighting and cussing and not even helping at all. i think that the author might have not put an actual meaning bcuz he wanted each person to decide for them selves. there is defenately a harder meaning to the regular poem. thanx again for being mature. ~LaDiE

... as you all think. I think you're each right, in a way, but you're all reading way too deep. In this poem, Williams is saying something about poetry. Since poetry is always about human life, he's saying something about life, too. But, to me, I think he was trying to show himself, the world, fellow poets, that an artist can make anything into a useful symbol, even a wheelbarrow. While Eliot and Pound were scouring ancient Hebrew and Greek texts looking for eternal "archetypes" to fill their great, long poems, Williams wrote this gem to show that a symbol is what a poet makes of it. You're right to say that the key words are "so much depends." With those words, people are put into the little scene without having them physically present. They are absent in this tableau, but their presence is felt. They depend on the wheelbarrow. If they didn't, then the wheelbarrow would be meaningless. And as such, wouldn't be useful artistically. Not the greatest poem ever written, but a good one at showing how poetry is meaning condensed.

well, i have this poem in my handy-dandy english book and underneath the poem it has a box explaining its meaning ((or lack thereof)) and indeed it says: Where William Carlos Willaims stood was a place where ordinary things were not used as symbols or metaphors; they were simply ordinary things." He did not agree with other poets at the time or previous times who used objects as simples which didn't really stand for themselves and thought that these things should simply stand for themselves, or atleast that is how i interpret it. Later on in the explaination it says "we must not attempt to give it meaning that it does not claim" so basically there is no deeper meaning to this poem. There is red wheel barrow, some rain, and white chickens.