The Red Wheelbarrow

 

I posted below the poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, the trigger for this poem was the part in the poem by Billy Collins titled "Picnic, Lightening" that I posted yesterday, were he discusses a wheelbarrow. My first introduction to the poem was about 15 years ago when i took a poetry class at UCLA extension. It was in the required reading material for the course. I cannot say the poem did much for me then or now even, except that the poem keeps finding me. Recently my wife used the book "Love that Dog" in her fourth grade class poetry section at Montair Elementary School, In Danville, California which featured the Red Wheelbarrow Poem.

In Billy Collin's Poem "Introduction to Poetry" he says the following:

"But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it."

I think the Wheelbarrow Poem is the perfect example of a poem that has been tied to a chair over and over again by endless people.

The poem possesses a  sort of  "chicken and egg"  feel. "So much depends on the wheelbarrow" begs the question would the white chickens even be there if it were not for the wheelbarrow. The rain is necessary to the chickens and for the need of the wheelbarrow. The white chickens give one the clue that we are talking about a farm or backyard garden area. The rain glaze on the wheelbarrow evokes a pleasant pastoral image.

In Woody Allen's movie "Annie Hall" one of the last lines in the movie is "perhaps we need the eggs".  Maybe so much depends on the wheelbarrow simply because we need the eggs.

The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams

---

so much depends
upon a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

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as one hour sweeps into the next...............

billy collins"



Picnic, Lightning
By Billy Collins
 

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three."
Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out onto the grass.
And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.
This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens--
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.
Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.

Famous

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and is not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
~Naomi Nye