poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

This poem is all about symbolization. The wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater symbolizes rebirth. The white chickens symbolize purity and they bring fresh images such as the idea of a fresh new start and endless opportunity. I always thought that people read way too much into this poem but i have come to realize that the poem is extremely deep. I am currently trying to write an essay on this poem and I am having a terrible time, so if anyone can help, that would be phenomenal!

To Ross Wreckless:
I noticed how it was in blank verse too. My friend said "so much depends" once, and I finished her sentince with the rest of the poem as a joke, and then she was told me, "no, you have to recite the poem with the line breaks or else it just sounds like blank verse." I don't agree with that statement, because you can read poetry however you want to, and the lines are purposely enjambed, and I find it interesting that he would make the poem in an oddly broken blank verse.

To Urgan Nodrey and Sean McCoy:
My friend's English teacher was also obsessed with that interepretation of that poem's representation of America with the red, white, and blue. I don't know if that was the original intent of the poem, but I think it does credit to the poem's abstractity (as someone said before) that it can be interpreted in many ways and no ways are wrong.

I actually like the interpretation that everything depends on nothing, it's kind of an extententialist interpretation.

I think that if you look at this poem from the chickens point of view you may see that so much depends on the Red Wheelbarrow. Having raised chickens myself, you may note that they enjoy standing out in the rain, if it is indeed raining. But Chickens get up early, crack of dawn, if they know they are fed out of the Wheelbarrow, then maybe you can see the significance of the item. All things are important, just to different people or in this case, creatures(chickens).

Many comments on this page reproach people for reading too much into this poem. I have also mostly liked to read this just as an image, appreciated the level of words and line structure etc, not thinking very much of a deeper meaning behind it.

BUT still, how can we tell what is too much? There is no such a thing as "the ultimate, true meaning" of this poem, or any poem for that matter. Surely we can always try to approach a poem from a biographic point of view and try to understand what the poet might have wanted to say with it, what was his reason for writing the poem, but there are a number of ways one can read a poem, or any piece of text that is meant to be art and not a factual account of things.

Therefore I do not think we can really say that anyone can read too much into this poem. The multitude of interpretations this poem seems to have evoked just highlights the nature of poetry and reading literature in general. Different people read texts in different ways, because of their different backgrounds, their different interests and whatever, the different texts they have read before they come and read this particular text, different ideas of anything. How one reads a text can depend on so many things that they are rather impossible to list (so much depends upon... what? If we cannot define what it is, it could as well be a red wheel barrow). I do not think that whatever the author thought of when writing a text needs to be taken as the official truth, what we should aim at when reading poetry. Different interpretations, or on the other hand not interpreting very much (even though obviously a reading without interpretation is utterly impossible) are the salt of the earth, so to say. And then it does not really matter how you read it, just as long as you read it.

Well, I got an F on my essay and I'm pissed. This poem is officially the worst poem in the history of the world. I have decided that i agree with Jesus on this one. The poem does suck balls and I think that WCW made up some useless junk to mess with everyone. Everyone should stop reading so far into this poem and just take it for what it is, a shitty piece of writing.

One of the interesting things about this poem is that it has sparked such an intense and open-ended debate about its meaning, and I believe that reflects a possible theme. While it is true that a poem should be possible to interpret apart from its creator and circumstance, often a look at the context is helpful in approaching the work.

William Carlos Williams was indeed a doctor, and this poem was written at the time of a young patient's death. The circumstances have grown into a myth, and are arguably part of the social dynamic to reading the poem. Some accounts actually say that he wrote it as the child lay dying.

In that sense, the simple things gain significance because he is perceiving them in pain. That pain, plus the objects themselves (I believe one of you mentioned realism) creates the meaning of the poem.

In the same sense, the condition in which you approach any poem, but especially such a concrete one, adds to the interpretation. I think it is a comment on our nature as human beings that we have a need to create meaning in our physical surroundings. Perhaps that is what William Carlos Williams was suggesting.

What is certain, however, is that this poem functions, like most poems: through contrast. In the literal situation, as someone commenter earlier, we are NOT presented with anything that depends on the wheelbarrow. And yet by asserting our dependence, Williams is forcing us to bring to bear our reasons as readers for why we MIGHT be dependant upon it. Just as it gained significance for him because of his pain, our context causes us to create threads of need around the object. Like a Brecht play, he is calling attention to what we bring to the scenario. He is attempting to give us a sort of poetic ink-blot test, or at least he is giving himself one, and hoping that we can identify with his need to see "so much" where there is empty space.

This is merely my reading, but I think that it answers many of the conflicting ideas about what and how this poem means.

Also, in my 'authoritative' edition, there is no period at the end of the poem.

I had thought that this poem was talking about the deep interconnectedness of things; that all events of the past have led up to the microcosm WCW illustrates, and that all events in the future likewise emanate from the tiny moments that we see around us. WCW frequently drew little tiny portraits of events and often seems to me to have this theme in mind. That is to me what he means by using the phrase 'depends upon.'

On reading some of the comments on this page I have learned that WCW was attending a dying patient while composing this poem, and perhaps with this in mind I think that perhaps there is a longing in the words, that if somehow the red wheelbarrow were not there, or not glazed with rain water, or the chickens were not so white, things could be different, and his patient would not have to die. As it is, they are as they are, and they, like all things, are part of an inescapable web of reality.

I also want to mention that as far as I know, the poem is untitled, except for the number XXII, in the context of the book _Spring and All_. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but if it is the case then that surely offers some skew to the interpretation.

Tom,

I don't know what edition you're referencing, but you're 0 for 2.

The poem is titled "The Red Wheelbarrow" in the New Directions Complete Poems edition - which is the only authoritative edition - and the poem has always ended with a period.

this poem is obviously about how important a red wheelbarrow is, and how it can carry stuff around and all you have to do is pull, youre making too big of a deal out of this, its as simple as i put it. hes just commenting on how great of an invention a wheelbarrow is, when he wrote it, it just happened to be raining, and he was eating chicken for dinner. easy as that.