At His Best, At His Worst
William Pratt’s anthology The Imagist Poem contains poems with a multifarious assortment of themes, subjects, and styles. All of them are grouped under the umbrella of Imagism, a twentieth century poetic movement that sought to revolutionize poetry. While all emerged from the same movement, they differ greatly from each other in quality. An excellent example of the Imagist poems’ varying degrees of merit comes from William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “The Locust Tree in Flower.”
In “The Red Wheelbarrow,” Williams creates a detailed image, consisting of the common objects rain water, chickens, and the titular red wheelbarrow. I enjoy how he effectively feeds the reader small pieces of information, beginning with the attention-grabbing “so much depends / upon.” I felt compelled to continue reading; it was as if I was about to learn a valuable lesson from a sort of aphorism. His word choice is simple and elegant, especially the description of the “glazed” wheelbarrow and the stark contrast between the tool’s red finish and the chickens’ white feathers. While Williams uses elliptical expression to suggest that some information is omitted, namely, what “depends upon” the scene, he manages to comment on the transient nature of life. Not only do I admire the poem for the skill that went into its creation, but I also find the poet’s philosophy engaging and apt. I interpreted the poem’s “meaning” as follows: a fundamental characteristic of human nature is to place a great deal of importance on the finite; the wheelbarrow, “glazed with rain / water,” and the chickens are both transient things, and a lot of what we care about depends upon things of this sort. Never have I enjoyed such valuable insight delivered with concrete, simple language. It awes me that Williams can both lyrically paint a vivid portrait and poignantly convey a universal truth in a mere sixteen words.
“The Locust Tree in Flower,” however, reveals a Williams that is, simply, sub-“Wheelbarrow.” Here he uses one-word lines, mainly adjectives, to describe the blooming of the tree mentioned in the title. While I find the adjectives fresh and enjoy the juxtaposition of dissimilar traits (“old” and “bright,” for example), his pairing of two prepositions in the opening stanza ruins the poem for me. “Among / of,” the poem begins, which, I feel, serves only to deliberately confuse the reader, something that seems pretentious in a thirteen-word description of a tree. Also, I feel that his word placement and stanza breaks are basically arbitrary. Rather than effectively describing the locust’s flowering, Williams, protected by the freedom of Imagism, appears to have jotted down a few words and pulled them from his hat. I found “Locust” neither skillful nor meaningful, and I feel that all good poems exhibit one of these qualities.
Both poems are characteristically Imagist; Williams directly and tersely approaches his subjects in both “Wheelbarrow” and “Locust.” However, I feel the two poems differ in their effectiveness. After being enthralled by the former and appalled by the latter, I have come to realize the difficulty in consistently creating superior art. But in Williams’ defense, to merely recreate and mimic oneself is not the mark of an artist. Williams’ voice is dynamic and unpredictable, and for this I applaud him.