The Red Wheelbarrow (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William Carlos Williams
- First Published: 1923
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Farms, farmers, or farming, Animals, Water, Light, Sun, Rain, Tools
“The Red Wheelbarrow” is perhaps one of the shortest serious poems ever published by an American poet. The structure is rigidly formal. The poem consists of four miniature stanzas of four words each.
so much depends
upona red wheel
barrowglazed with rain
waterbeside the white chickens.
Three images are involved: the wheelbarrow, described simply as red, the qualifying adjectival phrase “glazed with rain/ water,” which relieves the excessive severity of the second stanza, and the contrasting white chickens of the final...
[The entire page is 531 words long]
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