iams is concerned with the basic creation of an image; his poetry is a sort of minimalism, containing only the essentials - a very concrete image that will convey a tone. In "The Red Wheelbarrow," the poet presents a single image: The setting is probably a farm. The Red Wheelbarrow is stark; it is a bright color, distinct, man-made. The chickens are white, indistinct, insubstantial, auxiliary. It has just rained: there is a sense of rebirth, new life. The tone may be summarized as clarity, newness, affirmation of reality. And "so much depends upon" (224) this image. Williams creates images that are easy to convey yet profoundly substantial. They are not really metaphors, but through their "realness" suggest the oneness or congruity of reality. Whitman's presentation of the external world is an effort to create images that are democratic in their nature, encompassing the whole through particulars. Williams writes, Whitman's proposals are of the same piece with the modern trend toward imaginative understanding of life. The largeness which he interprets as his identity with the least and the greatest about him, his "democracy" represents the vigor of his imaginative life. (199) In "Song of Myself" Whitman presents images of everyday life in America. Like Williams, he possesses an acute sense of the moment. Whitman perceives the external world and distinctly portrays it: "His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hot away from his forehead,/The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polished and perfect limbs" (33). In this image Whitman conveys a common American, confident and determined, strong. The image is crisp and distinct. It is not a metaphor, but an example. It is a particular image of America, representative of the whole. Through this image, and multiple other images -catalogues of distinctly Amer...
