The Red Wheelbarrow & Other Poems

by William Carlos Williams

Here is a perfect little gift: the most beloved poems by the most essential American poet of the last century

Gathered here are the gems of William Carlos Williams’s astonishing achievements in poetry. Dramatic, energetic, beautiful, and true, this slim selection will delight any reader—The Red Wheelbarrow & Other Poems is a book to be treasured.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Read For School, Literature, Fiction, Ebooks, American

65 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 29, 2018

About the author

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.

Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.

In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.

Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems ~~ William Carlos Williams



William Carlos Williams’ 16-word poem, first published in 1923, was hailed as a manifesto of plain spoken American modernism. Williams himself declared it “quite perfect.” That is how I feel about the poems in The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems ; each one is quite perfect. Here is the perfect Williams' collection: the most beloved poems by one of the most essential American poets of the last century. Rather than me droning on about how brilliant Williams is ~~ and he is ~~ I want to share a couple of poems from this little gem of a book.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

These

are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night

to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought

that spins a dark fire—
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles

to make a man aware of nothing
that he knows, not loneliness
itself– Not a ghost but

would be embraced– emptiness,
despair– (They
whine and whistle) among

the flashes and booms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,

the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused—

Hide it away somewhere
out of the mind, let it get roots
and grow, unrelated to jealous

ears and eyes– for itself.
In this mine they come to dig– all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest

music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing– that is now stone.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much depends upon you reading this fine book of poetry! WCW is such an enigmatic poet; you often glimpse a 'meaning' only to see it hide behind you interpretation. There is a linguistic purity to his poems; stripped of all pretension and offered for what it is. One of my favorite poets.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know some people like this sort of thing, but Modernist poetry is... not for me.

The poem in its entirety is...

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

[Jason Pierce · Rating 1 out of 5]

We'll let George Carlin kick this one off.



This poem is one of my major psychotic fucking hatreds.

Crap, crap, crap, crap, CRAP!

Something I just saw, I can't recall what, made a casual reference to this poem. I immediately balled up my fists, screwed up my eyes, began to holler, rock and twist in my chair, beat on the arms, and drum my feet on the floor. That's what this poem does to me. Granted, I'm not a poetry fan to begin with, but this drivel is infuriating. I wish I could give it negative stars.

But the literary intelligentsia love it. (5/9/23 update: This link is now dead, say sorry, but it once led to an extremely in-depth article about everything you ever [or never] wanted to know about the poem with sources out the wazoo from every Tom, Dick, and Shithead who ever read it and liked it.) They're practically jacking off over this thing for all kinds of reasons, literary devices, etc., but I just don't get it. And really, does this thing really need that much discussion? Well, I do seem to be going on and on about it, so I guess I'm losing credibility here.

Here, read it for yourself:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Yea, verily does my assessment bear repeating: Crap, crap, crap, crap, CRAP! Crappity crapping crapper crap.

I understand the (false) legend behind it. Williams was attending a little girl who was sick, and if she made it through the night then she was going to live. So, if you could see the wheelbarrow while the girl was still living, that meant a new day had dawned, and she was saved, glory, glory, hallelujah. This kind of thing causes the literary world to have a collective orgasm, never mind the fact that this legend turned out to be bullshit. That didn't stop the teacher from making us spend class time discussing it and giving us homework on it to boot, though. I sure wish I could've given it the boot. Stupid, fucking poem.

Here's what Williams himself says about his inspiration for the poem: It "sprang from affection for an old Negro named Marshall. He had been a fisherman, caught porgies off Gloucester. He used to tell me how he had to work in the cold in freezing weather, standing ankle deep in cracked ice packing down the fish. He said he didn’t feel cold. He never felt cold in his life until just recently. I liked that man, and his son Milton almost as much. In his back yard I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing."

Well that just makes perfect sense.

There's a deer head hanging on the wall near me. A nine point buck, or something (there's a big hat hanging over some of the antlers and I'm too lazy to move it to see that half of the rack). It's been in our house since daddy got it 36 years ago. I'm thinking about it, and now I'm going to write a poem. Let me open myself to the cosmos and see what Buckleberry has to tell me...

A tasket, a tisket;
Gimme a fucking biscuit.

Can I get that published? The backstory makes as much sense as Mr. WCW's line, and I even used punctuation and capitalization!

I'm a poet,
And y'all can blow it.

There. As for exorcising the demon that causes such a visceral reaction to this thing... I've got it. I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a red wheelbarrow. Then I'm going to find William Carlos Williams' grave, dig him up and deposit the remains in the barrow. Then I'll get a couple of white chickens and throw them in as well. Then I'm going to wheel it up the side of the nearest active volcano, wait for it to start raining, and kick the whole shebang over the side.

But so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, and the only one I have is green... But it'll be red soon enough once it hits the lava. Problem solved.

DIE, POEM, DIE!

...I wonder if the pharmacist gave me placebos last time?

[Eloise · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Red Wheelbarrow," like so many other poems by Williams, is an experiment. It lacks punctuation, relies on chaotic or odd lineation, and generally blurs the customary distinctions between one thing or thought and another. He had a famous adage, "No ideas but in things," which I interpret to mean that when we talk about ideas, emotions, and abstractions, we must anchor them firmly in the world's things.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this copy of a collection of William Carlos Williams' poems called The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems at the Red Wheelbarrow bookshop in Paris.

I like the simple word pictures he creates in some of his poems. Some feel obscure.

[tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love you. Or I do not live
at all.

[Venky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doctor William Carlos Williams did not retreat to his bed once he was done examining his last patient at around eleven every night. He instead, substituted an old yet reliable typewriter for his stethoscope. Clacking away with two fingers, the medical practioner catering to the physical woes of an underprivileged section of the public in Rutherford, New Jersey, began giving shape and meaning to his myriad experiences as a medical professional. The result, an astounding collection of poems and short stories encapsulating human emotions in their most naked form. William Carlos Williams never got the recognition – as a writer of substance - that he so richly deserved until the fag end of his life. Not that the man himself cared a jot. He wrote because he was passionate; he wanted to capture the voice of the common man; he wanted to experience the angst that a family deprived by poverty and denied by circumstances went through. He succeeded beyond his own wildest imagination in this regard. He delivered close to 2,000 babies, and around that, and at times, even in the middle of it, never paused from writing.

“The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems” is an intriguing collection of poems that abandons rhyme and meter in favour of essence and meaning. Every poem is like a tree stripped of its bark to reveal its actual health or misery. Observation is Dr. Williams greatest ally as every object, howsoever mundane or trivial, becomes a tool to reflect upon. Brevity trumps pomp and the simple language of everyday writing overcomes bombast. The most popular poem in the collection is the one based on which the title of the book is derived – The Red Wheelbarrow. “So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens.” Dr. Williams wrote this poem a day after he spotted a red wheelbarrow and some white chickens in the backyard of an old man whose entire life was characterised by hard labour. The quality of “imagism”, a quintessential feature of modernism in poetry, is explicit in ‘The Wheelbarrow’. A wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater finds itself beside some white chickens. Nothing out of the ordinary; nothing special. Yet, as Dr. Williams strives to inform his readers, in the ordinary lies the extraordinary. The seemingly petty image of a wheelbarrow and a few chickens are to the poet much more relevant than philosophies conveying esoteric import. Hence the exhortation and a challenge to his readers to think beyond the obvious. The words “so much depends upon” purveys an impression that the triviality of the wheelbarrow is the strongest deception that masks its enormous influence. Without the modest wheelbarrow, its possessor might be rendered absolutely naught and powerless.

In another poem titled “Between Walls”, Dr. Williams, mulls about “the back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle.” This poem may as well be describing one of Dr. Williams’s visit to a ramshackle hospital around the perimeter of which lie strewn detritus of glass. Is the lack of growth here a reference to the absolute futility of the hospital itself? Dr. Williams practiced during the period of the Great Depression and many of his patients were so poor that they could hardly afford to pay him even meagre fees.

Dr. William’s also writes in a very poignant and telling manner the gradual phases in which relationship and trust is built between suffering patients who are suspicious of their Doctor initially before finally yielding to his methods. For example consider the poem titled “The Poor”

By constantly tormenting them
with the reminders of the lice in
their children’s hair, the
school Physician first
brought their hatred down on him.
But by this familiarity
they grew used to him, and so,
at last, took him for their friend and adviser.

“The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems” is an expression of hope for humanity. It is also a revelation of the relationship between suffering and triumph, a reconciliation with fate and death, and a restoration of trust and faith.

A physician’s beautiful relationship with his patients, eccentric and eclectic; expressive and egalitarian; enduring and encompassing.

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

"These things astonish me beyond words."

This is an excellent small collection of WCW's absolute best. And for being so small it does a pretty good job of displaying his poetic range. From small town odes, to singular images, to over-awed reflections on this cruel state of affairs we call life (and love), Williams has got some great stuff goin on. I've read Paterson which I did a far too extensive review on and a book of essays on him. I know he hated symbolism and was trying to do something different with his poetry. I also know he was kind of an arrogant prick who thought he could bend poetry to his will. But he's also a fairly sensitive poet, not without a certain graceful impartiality and a knack for phrasing.

You can enjoy these poems, representative of him, without getting into all that, making this an excellent recommendation to first time WCW-readers. Otherwise it's got a nice red color to it and the silhouettes of red chickens dotting every other page. I was drawn to the minimalism of it, but it's an otherwise very small book so it wasn't going to take up much shelf-space or time either way. Even if you're not looking to get into WCW, his style of free-verse poetry has been enormously influential in American poetry and is not a bad place to start if you would just like to become more familiar with American poetry of the past century. None of the poems come off as particularly out of date which speaks to WCW's timelessness. I've got two other small collections like this but not quite as new and shiny that I'm planning on reading in the next few months. So I'll continue my discourse on him with them.

I ran across a few I had never read before which were very enjoyable and others were old friends, pleasant to read again. "The Descent" was probably my favorite of the new to me poems. It features the offsetting of text down the page line by line-something usually associated more with Cummings.

" For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation--
a descent follows,
endless and indestructible ."

"The Yachts," "These," and "The Ivy Crown" were also really good.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book over several days. This is a great collection of the poems of William Carlos Williams. Most of the ones I expected were here, along with some that were new to me. This book is a good introduction to his poems, and it mostly has his shorter works, which are accessible and evocative. A hundred years after many of these poems were written, they are still as fresh as the plums pulled yesterday from the fridge.

[Kanika Saini · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[njain23 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to this poem in high school, but then re-introduced to it through the greatest TV show of all time -- Mr Robot. This poem is the the exact type of cheekiness I love. It's so vague and tongue in cheek, and yet I think you could spend a bunch of time trying to analyze it. There are so many references to the red wheelbarrow in Mr Robot in so many different contexts that you could spend all day talking about a 1 sentence poem about a farm tool, and that is why I like it so much.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Carlo William Carlos?"

[Holly Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid collection of poems. A few of these really put me in the shoes of the protagonist. With very limited space and words, Williams paints a perfect picture for you. A great lesson in the phrase "less is more". The poems are great and I suppose the only reason I'm not giving this book 5 stars is simply because the more melancholy pieces didn't seem as effective/ emotionally evocative as the happier, observant, or wistful ones. However, I have to admit that part of that could be because I read a very emotional novel just yesterday and perhaps it upped my resistance a little.

[Yasmine Iliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I technically started this, maybe some time in March if not in April. I’m trying to take my time with poetry and not read it so rapidly, and I’m glad I took my time with this!

I adored reading William Carlos Williams in my American Literature course earlier this semester, so I picked this up (after Ivan showed it to me) and while I do adore most of his poetry, the missing 5th star is because I think this was an interesting way to order the poems. Ending on “The Locust Tree in Flower” was a choice by whoever assembled this anthology, especially putting it after “Tract” and “The Ivy Crown” but each and every last one of his poems make me smile :)

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plums and wheelbarrow are all time great poems, but it was nice to meet some of WCW’s other, lesser known poems. He simultaneously high modern in his focus on language and sound and very humanist in his description of the small details of small town life he noticed from his carriage on his way to and from house calls. Makes these poems seem simultaneously contemporary and from another world.

[Ryan Jantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a newcomer to WCW and really to poetry in general, so no surprise that some of these poems immediately registered as the some of the greatest I’ve ever read. I tended to love the simpler, lighter poems in this collection rather than those I had to sit with for longer to try to crack (with varying success), but again, I’m new here. But for those like me, this lived up to the lofty expectations Williams comes with.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is just to say
I have read
the red wheelbarrow
and other poems

and at first
it was probably
because of Adam Driver
in Paterson

Forgive me
he was delicious
so sweet
and so tall




I cannot choose a favourite. You can't make me. I'm just glad this book is pocket sized, so I can carry it with me everywhere.

[Sjoukje · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for this little book! Its small size, the variety of the selected poems, and above all the little chicken icons scattered across its pages make this a great introduction to William Carlos Williams' poetry.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful collection! A few of my favorites: Poem, Queen-Anne’s-Lace, The Descent, Danse Russe

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for imagism and the local.

[chacierrr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very pretty poems and some o okay ones.

[Rick Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming and mysterious, just like me!

[Daniela]

I bought this book after watching the movie Paterson a couple of years ago and I’m glad I did. Some of the poems were really lovely and spoke to me quite a lot. Petition to have an audiobook narrated by Adam Driver.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to New Directions for publishing this very nice little chapbook, collecting about 50 of WCW's poems in a handy little volume. Feels so nice in your hand, too! Kudos to Marian Bantjes for design.
Unfortunately, in a slim, little volume like this, you can not include reproductions of the paintings that 2 or 3 of the poems included here are based upon. And it would have been nice to include the year of publication/writing at the end of each poem. But, minor flaws. And, again, kudos to the printing staff, who did a wonderful job following WCW's not always easy to follow line breaks ("The Ivy Crown" a good example).
A nice volume for yourself, and a great gift to introduce someone to Williams - who, decades after first reading him, is still my favorite poet.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't overthink it; it's sheer nonsense, but that, as well as its aesthetically pleasing nature, is what makes it great. Because it's so simple and cryptic, it's easily referenced and adapted. It is, in short, a meme in the form of a poem.

[Ashley Marilynne Wong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh my gosh this...is...cute! It has four stanzas with two lines in each and what makes it unique is the line pattern ie. three words in the first line of each stanza and a single word in the second. Really cool!

[Katherine Elizabeth]

such a small poem can evoke a 20 minute lecture.

[Ryan Dougans · Rating 5 out of 5]

These, The Descent, Tract and The Ivy Crown are what i would consider to be perfect poems. One of those collections that just keeps you enthralled with its story-telling and form