Discussion Topic
The significance of the lack of punctuation and line breaks in "The Red Wheelbarrow."
Summary:
The lack of punctuation and line breaks in "The Red Wheelbarrow" emphasizes the simplicity and visual nature of the poem. This minimalist style mirrors the straightforward yet profound observation of everyday objects, inviting readers to focus on the imagery and the essential elements of the scene described.
What is the significance of the lack of punctuation and line breaks in "The Red Wheelbarrow"?
William Carlos William’s poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” disobeys at least one rule of good writing: it uses a vague subject (“so much”) and never tells us what that subject is. What, example, depends on this red wheelbarrow? The success of this one farm? The order of the entire universe? Or what? It seems only fitting to me that the poem should disregard other conventions, such as capitalizing the first word to the sentence.
The line breaks may be significant because they, at least twice, force a break in a word into two pieces when that word would normally be written as one: “wheel / barrow” and “rain / water” instead of “wheelbarrow” and “rainwater.” (The second break also allows for a clear rhyme between “glazed” and “rain,” which might otherwise be overlooked.) Some critics have commented famously on these breaks (see, for example, the Voices & Visions series)....
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To me, these breaks encourage use to the see the words that make up larger words. We are thus encouraged to look at familiar items in a new way. Many of Williams’ other poems do much the same thing, for example, by turning a blossoming tree, a brief note of apology, a glimpse of a housewife in a robe, or shards of broken glass in an alley into poetry.
What is the significance of the lack of punctuation and line breaks in "The Red Wheelbarrow"?
This is one of those questions that I suspect could have several different answers, depending on how fancy you want to get. I am going to aim at the one in the middle...the one that is easiest to understand and is likely the most common.
Whenever a poet purposefully leaves out punctuation (or puts it in, for that matter,) there is a reason. In this case, it would seem that Williams does not want the reader to pause as much as he/she would if commas or periods were involved. The poem is meant to be read without any chop and on the same breath. It is one full thought in itself.
Well, Mr. Smartypants (you might say to me,) if Williams doesn't want you pausing then why does he have line breaks? Why not just run everything together? That's a good question. First, I suspect that it is because a line break is more of a visual pause than a literal one. That sounds like a crazy kind of answer, but it's not. A period or comma represents either a series of ideas or a total stop. It is a "hard" pause. The blank line, while giving space to the reader, might force a tiny slowdown as the eyes move but it does not do so formally.
There is, of course, also the fact that the blank lines make the individual stanzas look like little wheelbarrows : )