Respond to a Reading: William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Read the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” below and respond to the questions in the margin. When you are done, “submit” your response.
William Carlos Williams
(1883–1963)
Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, William Carlos Williams graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (MD, 1906), interned at hospitals in New York City for two years, studied pediatrics in Leipzig, and then returned to practice medicine in his hometown. As a general practitioner, Williams found ample poetic inspiration in his patients, scribbling down lines between appointments and on the way to house calls. His early collections include The Tempers (1913), Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920), and Sour Grapes (1921). A stroke in the mid-1950s forced him to retire from his medical practice but gave him more time to write. His many honors include the National Book Award in 1950 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1963. The Williams Reader was published in 1966.
What “depends upon” this scene? That is, what makes this apparently mundane image important?
Why is it the wheelbarrow in the title and a wheelbarrow in the poem? This change might seem insignificant, but in a poem of only sixteen words, Williams was certainly scrutinizing each one. What difference does it make?
What scene does Williams depict in this poem? How would you imagine a painting or photograph of the scene? Describe it in more words than Williams uses.
The Red Wheelbarrow
1
so much depends
upon
2
a red wheel
barrow
3
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
From The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909–1939. Copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.)