And in the wake of National Poetry Writing Month.
Here is a poem by our very own Linda Lambert
But first…
The Red Wheelbarrow (1923)
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
FOR THE RED WHEELBARROW WRITING GROUP* by Linda Lambert
Standing before you:
four couplets
of our namesake poem,
a single declarative
sentence.
No capital letters,
no punctuation,
except for that annoying
final period.
Then those lines forcing pauses.
and the disparate subjects:
a lonely wheelbarrow,
(a common object)
beautified by rain,
plus a few chickens,
(social creatures)
next to a farmer’s equipment.
Think about this poem
cinematically,** in which
we readers are prodded
to change perspective.
The wheelbarrow is a close-up.
The rainwater glaze,
an extreme close up.
The wheelbarrow, combined with the chickens, a wide angle view.
I can see the poem as a painting,
as Williams’ painter mother
might have seen it,
a still life with implied action,
and the color red,
a contrast to the color white.
Williams wrote this poem, he said,
because it gave him pleasure.
Laughing, he explained:
“Then I thought about it
and I wondered what it meant.”**
Ninety-two years later,
after explications by many pens,
we continue to think and wonder,
remaining captivated.
————————————————-
* https://www.redwheelbarrowwriters.com/
**an idea suggested by X.J. Kennedy in the Winter 2001 issue of Explicator
***from a radio interview of William Carlos Williams by Mary Margaret McBride in 1950
Nearly wept when you read this at our social, Linda. Thank you for writing this remarkable poem!