Sorry this is late. Uni is a killer at the moment.
See you tomorrow.
Simon
****
In The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams offers the reader the deceptively familiar image of the wheelbarrow of the title, ‘glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens’. On the surface, it appears to be a simple poem, evoking a farmyard scene recognised by many as typical of rural life or perhaps as an image from a childhood storybook. Upon closer inspection we can see certain techniques employed by the poet which lend an uneasy air of strangeness to the poem; defamiliarising an image that the reader may well feel is all too familiar. It is in the first two lines, ‘so much depends / upon’, that Williams creates this uneasiness. The picture of innocence has had a sudden, unexpected weight attached to it; robbing it of its benign nature and giving rise to a sense of impending consequence.
We are never told, nor is it suggested, just what the nature of this ‘so much’ might be. The deliberate ambiguity of the poem leads us to examine more closely the poet’s choice of words and the structure he has imposed upon the poem. The use of the colours ‘red’ and ‘white’ creates a vivid image in the reader’s mind. The word ‘glazed’ serves to somehow frame the wheelbarrow; the centrepiece of the scene. Williams has isolated certain words, separating ‘red wheel’ from ‘barrow’, ‘rain’ from ‘water’ and ‘white’ from ‘chickens’. The intention here may be to separate the images in the poet’s mind. Perhaps it is this formatting of the image and not necessarily the image itself upon which ‘so much depends’. In light of this reading, the air of unease now takes on particularity as content becomes bound to form.
The tone of the poem, This is Just to Say, is in stark contrast to the uncertainty that seems to hang over The Red Wheelbarrow. In this poem, Williams is lighter, almost jocular and teasing in his note-on-the-fridge style letter to someone, presumably his wife, a close friend or a lover, whose plums he has eaten from the icebox. The first stand-out element of the poem is Williams’ incorporation (or insinuation, rather) of the title into the main body of the poem. The line runs so smoothly, in conversational style, into the first line of the first stanza that one could well imagine it written thus: ‘This is just to say / I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox’.
After the poet’s casual candour in the first two stanzas (evident both in the use of the word ‘just’ in the title and in Williams’ seemingly educated guess that the now plum-less recipient of the note was originally ‘probably / saving [the plums] / for breakfast’), the poem is punctuated suddenly by the first line of the third stanza, ‘Forgive me’. These words form either an imperative, a justification or a kind of plea (albeit half-hearted, given the succeeding lines). If we read it as an imperative, or directive, then we do so subscribing to the light-hearted tone of the poem, written perhaps in a moment of post-gluttonous guilt to a loved one whose breakfast has been stolen. As a justification, the effect is much the same; Williams asks forgiveness because the plums were ‘delicious’. Indeed, there is a kind of deliciousness to his audacity for saying so. However, if we look carefully at the last three lines of the third stanza, there is a sense of poignancy which is borne out in the repetition of the word ‘so’ and the ending of the poem with the words ‘so cold’
‘they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold’
Reading a sense of poignancy and, perhaps, regret into the end of the poem casts the rest of the poem is a very different light. As the line preceding this air of sadness, ‘Forgive me’ becomes more of a plea, as mentioned above. In light of this, the entire note may itself be read as merely a preamble to an apology for a sin far greater than the theft of plums from an icebox. It is a mark of Williams’ skill as a poet that he is able to take a sentiment like ‘This is just to say . . . Forgive me’ and cast it in terms of the playful relationship that may have been torn asunder by the act that warranted the plea for forgiveness. Much like in The Red Wheelbarrow, the longer one looks at the poem the more Williams achieves the effect of stripping away whatever initial impressions one may have and whatever constructions of meaning may be built on such impressions. Consequently we are left reading and contemplating a very different poem than that which we first encountered.
We are never told, nor is it suggested, just what the nature of this ‘so much’ might be. The deliberate ambiguity of the poem leads us to examine more closely the poet’s choice of words and the structure he has imposed upon the poem. The use of the colours ‘red’ and ‘white’ creates a vivid image in the reader’s mind. The word ‘glazed’ serves to somehow frame the wheelbarrow; the centrepiece of the scene. Williams has isolated certain words, separating ‘red wheel’ from ‘barrow’, ‘rain’ from ‘water’ and ‘white’ from ‘chickens’. The intention here may be to separate the images in the poet’s mind. Perhaps it is this formatting of the image and not necessarily the image itself upon which ‘so much depends’. In light of this reading, the air of unease now takes on particularity as content becomes bound to form.
The tone of the poem, This is Just to Say, is in stark contrast to the uncertainty that seems to hang over The Red Wheelbarrow. In this poem, Williams is lighter, almost jocular and teasing in his note-on-the-fridge style letter to someone, presumably his wife, a close friend or a lover, whose plums he has eaten from the icebox. The first stand-out element of the poem is Williams’ incorporation (or insinuation, rather) of the title into the main body of the poem. The line runs so smoothly, in conversational style, into the first line of the first stanza that one could well imagine it written thus: ‘This is just to say / I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox’.
After the poet’s casual candour in the first two stanzas (evident both in the use of the word ‘just’ in the title and in Williams’ seemingly educated guess that the now plum-less recipient of the note was originally ‘probably / saving [the plums] / for breakfast’), the poem is punctuated suddenly by the first line of the third stanza, ‘Forgive me’. These words form either an imperative, a justification or a kind of plea (albeit half-hearted, given the succeeding lines). If we read it as an imperative, or directive, then we do so subscribing to the light-hearted tone of the poem, written perhaps in a moment of post-gluttonous guilt to a loved one whose breakfast has been stolen. As a justification, the effect is much the same; Williams asks forgiveness because the plums were ‘delicious’. Indeed, there is a kind of deliciousness to his audacity for saying so. However, if we look carefully at the last three lines of the third stanza, there is a sense of poignancy which is borne out in the repetition of the word ‘so’ and the ending of the poem with the words ‘so cold’
‘they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold’
Reading a sense of poignancy and, perhaps, regret into the end of the poem casts the rest of the poem is a very different light. As the line preceding this air of sadness, ‘Forgive me’ becomes more of a plea, as mentioned above. In light of this, the entire note may itself be read as merely a preamble to an apology for a sin far greater than the theft of plums from an icebox. It is a mark of Williams’ skill as a poet that he is able to take a sentiment like ‘This is just to say . . . Forgive me’ and cast it in terms of the playful relationship that may have been torn asunder by the act that warranted the plea for forgiveness. Much like in The Red Wheelbarrow, the longer one looks at the poem the more Williams achieves the effect of stripping away whatever initial impressions one may have and whatever constructions of meaning may be built on such impressions. Consequently we are left reading and contemplating a very different poem than that which we first encountered.
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Keep it clean & constructive.
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