William Carlos Williams is a superb artist. Not only has he created a masterpiece of a poem, but he has also cultivated abstract and concrete images to paint a picture of his red wheelbarrow. Each word is a brushstroke to this “still life” poem. He has also taken elementary objects, such as a wheelbarrow and a chicken, and turned them into icons of industrialized civilizations. Without these indispensable components, society would not be as evolved as it is today. Williams uses an experimental structure in his free verse poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” and effectively demonstrates an array of figurative language. He also utilizes simplistic images to capture the essence of childhood, setting and technology. Through the use of figurative language, such as imagery and verbal music, Williams was able to convey a vivid, realistic perception of this wheelbarrow with unique spacing and pauses. The first image we encounter comes in line three with “a red wheel” (3). As the word “barrow” (4) is added to compound “wheel” (3), it becomes evident that it is a red wheelbarrow. This image has a familiarity about it in a way that I can somewhat imagine a setting now. The lucid wheelbarrow plants an intense image in the scene. “Glazed with rain/water” (5-6) transforms the red wheelbarrow to a new illusion with a whole different feel to it. The word “glazed” (5) evokes a painterly image. The ordinary wheelbarrow, now “glazed with rain” (5), is luminous and wet. “Beside the white/chickens” (7-8) is perhaps the most fascinating image of all. At first thought it seems irrelevant to this abstract “still life” poem, but then it becomes very influential to the setting of the wheelbarrow. Another figurative language device Williams incorporates meticulously is verbal music. Williams was able to create unusual pauses in this sentence by spacing...
