Hello and welcome to the Discourse. William Carlos Williams was an American modernist poet and physician who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962 for his poetry collection Pictures From Brueghel and Other Poems. He was appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC in the year 1952. William Carlos Williams was born on September 17, 1883, in Rutherford, New Jersey and he died on March 4, 1963. He graduated from the Medical School of Pennsylvania University in 1906 and began his internship as a child specialist at Child’s Hospital in New York and then he went to Leipzig for advanced research in Pediatrics. In Europe, he came in contact with Ezra Pound and became one of his close friends. He was inspired by the modernist imagist movement. He published his first poetic collection Poems in 1909. In 1923, He published his extended poetic collection by the title “Spring and All,” in which the short imagist pictorial poem The Red Wheelbarrow was published.
Structure of The Red Wheelbarrow:
“so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.”
The Red Wheelbarrow is a short imagist poem with minimal words used while offering much greater meaning. William Carlos Williams was treating a terminally ill girl child and when she was very ill, he spent the whole night sitting beside her as he was not sure how and when he will be needed. During that night, he saw a little red wheelbarrow and a few chickens the girl child used to play with. William wrote this short poem that night while sitting beside the child.
The poem is written in free verse following the Japanese haiku pattern of poetry. The poet used enjambment, metaphor, assonance, juxtaposition, and imagery. The poem consists of four stanzas with two lines each. Each first line of all stanzas consists of three words while all the second lines of all four stanzas contain just one word. Each line adds more to the picture the poet draws through his words.
It is a very short poem and the whole essence of the poem can be expressed in a single sentence that has been dissected in eight different lines (four stanzas) through enjambment. The poet didn’t use any capital letters anywhere in the poem, indicating that the poet was observing and meditating which resulted in a poem.
Themes of The Red Wheelbarrow :
At first notice, the poem may appear absurd and puts too much value on a seemingly common wheelbarrow. However, on deeper consideration, the reader can easily understand that the seemingly worthless wheelbarrow is actually priceless. The poem suggests that often we overlook some of the very crucial objects that do possess a greater meaning to ourselves. Sentimentality and commonly used tools and objects are the basic themes of the poem. The poet also stresses on nature of civilization and its dependence on labor, agriculture, or rural activities and how they depend on a wheelbarrow, a common object. For thousands of years, since man invented the wheel, farmers and workers are using wheelbarrows. While a successful civilization is often described by the literature, or architecture it produced, we often ignore the simple tools that helped that society to develop those intricate buildings, artifacts, and literature. The wheelbarrow also symbolizes the working class, the workers who actually work, such as farmers, miners, construction workers, and so on, to establish the whole setup of a great civilization. We often ignore these workers as unskilled labor, yet, so much depended on them in past, and so much depends on them now.
The poet uses juxtaposition to explain the wheelbarrow which appears to be an unimportant tool as something on which the whole world rests.
Summary of The Red Wheelbarrow:
The poem is too short and too simple. The first two stanzas describe a red wheelbarrow placed idly as it is not being used for a while. The third stanza shows that it is raining slightly or drizzling as the wheelbarrow is ‘glazed’ with water. The rain is not heavy, it is not outpouring the field. The atmosphere and surroundings are calm and quiet, there are no thunders and frightening lightning. In the fourth stanza, the poet suggests how calm it is as some chickens normally continue to make noise, but they too are silent.
In the first two lines, the poet used enjambment that offers the quality of mystery to the poem. On one hand, it appears vague but it also appears suggestive too. The red wheelbarrow has been used as a symbol. For those, who knew the girl child whom William was treating, it was the precious toy of that girl who used to play with it. The toy was still as the girl was too ill and William being her doctor was pensive. His hope for the survival of the girl depended on that wheelbarrow.
On the other hand, even for someone who has no idea about the patient of William, the red wheelbarrow represents a common tool that is very basic to farming. The presence of chickens near the wheelbarrow indicates that the poet is talking about a wheelbarrow being used in a field or rural area.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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