William Carlos Williams 'Poem The Red Wheelbarrow'

The Red Wheelbarrow was an interesting poem, one because it's short and was able to keep my attention for the 4 lines of text, two because it seemed to combine the two popular prose styles of romanticism and realism. William Carlos Williams utilizes a sense of realism by depicting a scene of an everyday red wheelbarrow on farm, but also romanticizes the wheel barrow in strange yet cool way. He puts the wheelbarrow, a simple yard tool, on pedestal by saying that "So much depends upon the red wheel barrow" and it made me realize he was right. He seems to be trying to make a point that even the simplest of items in your everyday life are vital, and that even if you may not be able to see its effect it is there. This made me think about all of
the seemingly insignificant items in my life that actually provide quite the service.

The simplicity of the poem also adds to the message being conveyed here. Even a poem as simple as this one, can relay a multitude of important messages and meanings that you wouldn't expect just by glancing at it. This simplicity is another example of his modern style breaking away from the precedent of longer eloquent poems, and showing that one can provoke just as much thought in a shorter seemingly elementary poem. One could possibly compare the poem to the red wheelbarrow itself; in the fact that you shouldn't overlook something's value just because on the outside it seems rudimentary.

Overall the combination of a realist style subject, with romanticized implicit meaning made this poem the most interesting to me out of the 5. His ability to romanticize realism was something I hadn't seen before, but was extremely intrigued by it.