William Carlos William’s ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ is often cited as one of the best Imagist poems we have in contemporary history:
the red wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
You could add ‘This Is Just To Say’to the list and you have another masterpiece of WCW in the realm of Imagist poetry:
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Another exponent of Imagism was Ezra Pound, and nothing could better describe his contribution of Imagism than one of his most widely anthologized poem, ‘In A Station Of The Metro’:
In A Station Of The Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
But what makes these poems tick? Why is it that they have remained popular for so long? I suspect that much of it lies in the simplicity of the structure of the poems. Each line is short and fraught with possibilities.
Yes, it can be argued that the real meaning behind his ‘red wheelbarrow’ is something that can never be ascertained because of all the underlying ambiguities. Are the lines to be taken literally? Or do they signify something deeper, a puzzle or a riddle that the general mass hasn’t be privy to? Is this really poetry? Or a cute sentence broken-up at random to give us something gimmicky?
Whatever be the case, ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ is often quoted by early poets as one of the poems that changed their perception of what poetry could be. I do wonder what impact such poems will have on the psyche of kids reading poetry at school. Personally speaking, I would have been absolutely wonderstruck and delighted to have been introduced to this poem in high school. Most of the poems I read were more classical than contemporary, and quite frankly, they put me off. Does poetry in high school always have to be about hidden meanings? Having access to poetry of this kind would have changed my attitude towards poetry.
That’s not to say that Indian text-books are poetry killers. I was going through one of my younger cousin’s CBSE text for English literature the other day, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Plath and Ezekiel in his text.
Well, may be, things are turning for the better…
