"The Red Wheel‑Barrow" is a poem written by American modernist poet William Carlos Williams. It was first published in 1923 in the literary magazine Poetry and later included in Williams’s 1938 collection Spring and All. The poem consists of a single stanza of eight lines, each divided into two short phrases, forming a total of sixteen lines. Its structure is notable for its lack of conventional punctuation and its free‑verse form.
The poem’s text reads:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
"The Red Wheel‑Barrow" is frequently discussed in the context of imagism and object‑centred poetry. Critics highlight its focus on ordinary, visual details and its minimalistic language, arguing that the poem emphasizes the significance of mundane objects through precise description. The poem has been widely anthologized and is considered a seminal work in 20th‑century American poetry, often cited in academic curricula and literary analyses.
