"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon  

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The ultimate in minimalist Imagism, one may argue, is William Carlos Williams' snapshot of life "The Red Wheelbarrow".

The images conjured up by the poem suggest a farm, perhaps. "A red wheel/barrow" is not likely to be found in any small-time garden. "White chickens" certainly adds to the agricultural appeal.

This wheelbarrow is "glazed" with rain water, which conjures up a damp, moist area of land. Perhaps one can also detect a dour barn in the background, perhaps also a lust, lathered field of green.

The great defect in most poems as essentially minimalist as "The Red Wheelbarrow" is that they may inevitably demand so much from the reader, in that the wheelbarrow, along with the rain water and the white chickens, actually depend on the person scanning the poem to infuse them with meaning.

"So much depends upon" the person viewing. The philosophical conceit which way may draw from this snippet is indeed profound, however.

What does "depend" or hang upon a red wheelbarrow? The rain water, certainly. The next years harvest, or the feed for the chickens, certainly. So much potential is crammed into these two words "so much", yet the meaning is still mesmerizing, in that the poem awakens optionals ideas without impoverishing the depth of the poem or its simple surface images.

Even the stanzas imitate the slow drip of water "glazed", a word which the reader cannot resist but explicate:

"Glazed" as an adjectival past participle, contains the following meanings:

To fit, furnish, or secure with glass: glaze a window.

2. To apply a glaze to: glaze a doughnut; glaze pottery.

3. To coat or cover thinly with ice.

4. To give a smooth lustrous surface to.

The wheelbarrow may indeed be covered with a thin veneer of ice, except that the chickens would not be near the piece. If the rainwater has created a "smooth, lustrous surface," then it must be reflecting something. We may not be able to determine what, aside from a newly-shining sun or the light, white feathers of the chickens nearby, but the simplicity of these images becomes arresting in their calm depth, for we connect these sensations to our intellect without great prompting.

Our reaction, our sentiment, the values we draw from a farm-like scene, all depend on these inconsequential elements. And therein lies the latent, subtle beauty of a poem which to the glancing skeptic would offer possibly too little for the reader to interpret.