Programme 2

The Red Wheelbarrow

  The Red Wheelbarrow and To a Poor Old Woman by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Williams’ imagist approach focuses attention directly and concisely to capture the individuality of things and their organic interrelationships. Meaning resides intrinsically within his uses of poetic form and diction.

Single lines, each isolating one, double-syllable (part compound) word, both particularise and interrelate a barrow, its condition and context; the sense of each (and all) further modified by a preceding triple word line.

a red wheel-
barrow

glazed with rain-
water

beside the white
chickens

~The Red Wheelbarrow

So much of what is portrayed and perceived also depends upon the spatial relationships of words and the critical emphasis of rhythmic pauses where lines and stanzas end. Michael Donaghy notes that ‘No other poet before Williams uses the white space around the page… the way the light is broken so much for emphasis, to emphasise different parts of the way a statement can be made and its implications’:

They taste good to her
They taste good
To her. They taste
Good to her

~To a Poor Old Woman

Further comment is offered by Jean Binta Breeze, Jane Hirschfield, Matthew Hollis, Kenneth Koch, Roger McGough and Jerry Rothenberg.