Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Red Wheelbarrow
This is a poem Written by Williams Carlos Williams. At first look, this poem seems like a meaningless poem that makes no sense. However, even after the first time one reads it, one can sense a slight feeling of pain. Knowing the background for this poem greatly helps the understanding of Williams and the poem. Williams was visiting a terminally ill girl in the hospital, trying to cheer her up and make her last moments enjoyable. While he was there she died. He looked out the window and saw a red wheelbarrow sitting in the, next to some white chickens. This poem was a way of keeping her memory alive and showing the frailness of life.
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The story that I was told was that he had made a house call to the home of the sick child. She died and he noticed these things outside of a window -- or something like that. Some hold that he was just there caring for the child and noticed the wheelbarrow in the rain and wrote the poem. We don't know, according to this story, if she actually died. Perhaps it was just that she was ill. It is hard to track down the story. Williams says that he wrote the poem in just a few minutes (2? maybe 5?) but who knows. He did try to stay with the idea "No ideas but in things." This poem is considered to be his masterpiece. It has been anthologized more than any of his other work. Arguments abound about what it means. I hold with the idea that all he was trying to do was attach a feeling to some things that he saw. I think that he succeeds in that quest.
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