What do you think of the poem "Red Wheelbarrow" ?

Question

What is it trying to say or what does it value? I'm lost.

"so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens"

Answer 1

It's an imagist poem so think of it as a photograph. The poem uses enjambment in each of its four stanzas. The first stanza even highlights how the syntax of the run-on line reflects the meaning being conveyed: we read ‘So much depends / upon’ and depend upon the continuation of the poem into the second line to provide us with the rest of the meaning. An interesting way to read the poem is to stop at the end of the first line of each stanza and ask, what comes next?

Answer 2

Free range the deranged

Answer 3

It's about how objects can only exist in relation to other objects. In this poem we can experience the wheel barrow in relationship, like the rain, etc. The poem doesn't really have a meaning per se, it's just what it is in the present now.

Answer 4

It,s about the postie-pushing his read wheelbarrow around the streets //
right/?

Answer 5

William Carlos Williams was an Imagist poet, and, as such his poetry sets out to imprint an image on the readers mind. It's very close to a piece of painted art and it's not hard to imagine through the few words of this poem, a scene containing a bright red wheelbarrow, wet through rain, beside some white chickens. That's what Imagist poetry sets out to do, and little wonder, on reading this poem that it does conjure up a vivid picture in the mind.

Answer 6

We go around and around thinking this or that is the most pressing matter at hand, things like paying the bills or the economy or humankind in general, when it's the small, usually unnoticed things that ACTUALLY maintain the balance, that are essential to our aesthetic well-being.

Don't simply copy and paste this for your homework. Read the poem 18,000 times and then meditate on it for 3 full days . . .William Carlos Williams is awesome.