Topic: Write an essay of two pages on visual forms in "The Red Wheelbarrow."
1. Read the poem over several times silently as well as aloud. Practice reading the poem in different tones of voice. Check the dictionary for any meanings of any words or phrases that seem odd. Try picturing the poem's scene as vividly as you can. What do you see? What do you not see?
2. Establish an argument about the poem in your mind as clearly and as precisely as you can. Look for material in the poem to support that argument. Write an outline of your argument in sections that correspond to paragraphs; include the evidence that you have gathered in the appropriate sections.
3. Select a title for your essay that indicates to the reader the core of your argument. Begin writing your first draft. Remember that you will probably pick up ideas while writing. For the second draft, be ready to move ideas forward in the essay, that is, toward the beginning.
4. In thinking about the poem, consider first the visual form on the page before you. Try copying down the poem as a prose sentence of one line. After contrasting the two forms, ask yourself what effects are conveyed by the poet's typographical layout, which seems to move the eye vertically (as well as horizontally), and which separates adjectives from nouns.
5. Another aspect of the visual form before you is the syntactical form of the English language. Adjectives modify nouns; nouns can be brought together to make up another noun (wheel + barrow); participles of verbs ("glazed") can serve as adjectives and modify nouns. How does the poem make you aware of this formal element in its construction?
6. No. 4 asks you to think of the poem itself as a visual object. But that does not mean that the poem is a picture of, say, a wheelbarrow (See Feb 22 for a picture poem). The poem is also about the visual experience of a certain scene (a farmyard? Or not?). Color contrasts are involved (red set against white, red glazed with rain, etc.). Think about what isn't there. There is no mention of dirt or mud, other tools, etc.
7. Evaluation is present. "So much depends . . ." is the start of the poem. How much is "so much"? What exactly are we to think of dependency? To what extent does the meaning of the first line depend upon the significance we find in the following lines?
8. In another poem, Williams remarks: "No ideas / But in things." Are there ideas in the things of this poem? And what exactly are the things?
9. Do not write your paper as a set of answers to these questions.