Whose “Red Wheelbarrow” Was it?

In Sergio Rizzo’s evaluation of William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow” he labels it as one of the most debated poems to come out of the modernist movement. Rizzo examines the emotional agenda behind the poem by revealing two articles where Williams discusses the context of the piece. One of the sources was found in an article, “Seventy Years Deep,” written for Holiday magazine in 1954.

A Holiday Magazine issue in 1954 revealed the owner of the “red wheelbarrow.”

The other emotional description was discovered in Fifty Poets, an American Auto-Anthology written in 1933 edited by William Rose Benét. Both segments talk about Williams as a “poet of the people,” a named derived from his role as a doctor and a member of the community. Williams even goes on to attributed his success as a poet to the people of his town whom he consciously observed and learned so much from. Rizzo’s recovery of the 1954 “Seventy Years Deep” article provides a description of what Williams recalls about the nature of the poem. The poems roots take hold in William’s relationship with an old Negro fisherman named Marshall who Williams was very fond of. Marshal worked in the ice-cold waters of Gloucester where he hand fished in ankle deep water but claimed he had never been cold in his life. Williams “liked that man. In Marshal’s backyard [Williams] saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. [He] supposed [his] affection for the old man somehow got into his writing (Holiday magazine 78). Rizzo suggests the interesting aspect of this relationship between these two men is its lack of documentation. Williams goes onto to discuss how “The Red Wheelbarrow” is one of the only poems he can recall because of its brevity. Or is it maybe because of its sentimental significance? The reader must decide, however either way, Rizzo highlights an intriguing backstory to such an ambiguous poem.    

Rizzo, Sergio. “Remembering Race: Extra-Poetical Contexts and the Racial Other in ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’.” Journal of Modern Literature29.Fall (2005): 34-54. MLA International. Web. 27 Feb 2014.