Today I went in as a pinch-hitter for a friend who unexpectedly had to be at a funeral. My friend teaches a college composition course, and one of the poems I was asked to discuss in class was "To A Poor Old Woman" by William Carlos Williams. WCW seems to be one of those poets whom people either swoon to or don't get at all, and I was curious as to how the class would respond to this barely punctuated poem, in which very little actually happens.
In preparation for this class, I decided to conduct an experiment at home. (You can try it, too, but don't blame me if there's an explosion.) I found a copy of what is arguably WCW's best known poem and I asked both my husband and my son to read it, and then give me whatever responses first came to mind.
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
My husband, who, like me, has now passed the half-century mark (and has therefore learned a bit of guile and craft) did what he always does when unexpectedly confronted with something like the above-mentioned poem. His eyes darted around nervously. A pained expression came over his face, and I could tell that he was thinking, "I wish to God she wouldn't do this to me." But he gamely started trying to guess what I wanted him to say, scanning my expression for clues as to whether I was going to award the equivalent of a gold star by exclaiming, "You're absolutely right, and I am delighted I married somebody with such a penetrating intellect and keen sense of aesthetic appreciation." I did not do this; as far as I was concerned, this was a game of poker and I needed to make sure I didn't give away a thing.
After about five minutes of my ruthlessly employing the Socratic method, asking him questions and then not giving him any answers, just a lot more questions, he started getting annoyed. I know this, because when I replied to his, "I guess it's a great poem," with "What makes you say this?" he said rather crossly, "Because you told me it was a great poem, and it's in a book. What do you want from me?"
To his immense relief, his cell phone rang just then and a client who wanted to talk about commercial real estate was on the other end,so he got out of Literature Q&A Hell and I went into my eighteen year old son's room to play a little Poetry Poker with him.
I explained that I wanted his response to the poem because it would be helpful to me to get an honest reaction from somebody who had never been exposed to this poet before, and who had no stake in giving me the "right" response, since obviously I am not grading my family on their reactions to the red wheel barrow, all shiny with the rainwater and surrounded by the chickens. My son, God love him, read it through, looked up at me, and deadpanned, "WTF, Mom. See, this is why I hate school. They make you read this stuff, and then they make you talk about it."
So - what was the point of taking this approach to teaching the poem? I did it because I knew for a fact that many of my students would, at least internally, have the exact same response as my son's - and that, because this was going to be discussed in a classroom setting, those who did would most likely be too polite to say so, and would, like my husband, cover up their confusion as to why this is regarded as a great poem by trying to guess what they were supposed to say.
So after we had read the poem aloud in class, and had a bit of discussion as to its structure - the lack of capitalization, the fact that it looks like a completely random arrangement of words, but then you realize that there are actually four stanzas, and that each stanza is built the same - three words in the first line, one word in the second line, and if you squint and have an imagination you could even maybe pretend that each stanza looks a little bit like a wheelbarrow - I told my class the anecdote about having my husband and my son read the poem, and what they had said about it. The bodies in the seats, so tense a moment before, relaxed visibly. Aha - they weren't the only ones who couldn't see what all the fuss was about!
But, I said, there's more! In my ambition to have my students wring every drop of learning they can out of this poem, I did some research! I went on YouTube to see whether I could find WCW himself reading the tale of the Poor Old Woman and/or the Red Wheelbarrow out loud. And - I found one. WCW himself reads The Red Wheelbarrow aloud - and quite beautifully, too. And then, he replies to an interviewer who asks him about the poem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3T1j7AaNSo
WCW: I wrote that. And then, of course, I sat down to think about it.
Interviewer: And what did you think?
WCW: I wondered what it meant.
Pandemonium. Whaaaaat? The guy who wrote it didn't even know what it meant? Well, then, how could it possibly be a good poem? My class, so nervous and repressed a few minutes before, exploded into noisy relief. As far as they were concerned, the emperor had just proclaimed his own nudity.
And this was exactly where I wanted us to get. I wanted to get us to a place where we could have an honest discussion about personal response to a poem. Now, the barrier of "Somebody's going to think I'm stupid if I admit that I don't get this" had fallen, and suddenly, everybody had an opinion and was eager to let us know what it was.
The point of the particular class I was teaching today is to teach students how to write a paper about art - whether that artwork takes the form of music, a poem, a movie, a play, a painting, a sculpture, or a work of fiction. What I wanted my students to understand is, "You do not have to like every artwork you've been told is great. You do not have to manufacture a false emotional response to it. Some people may read this poem, and it may speak to them on a very deep and personal level. That is their response. It is neither more nor less valid than yours, if yours is, 'I read this, and it didn't do much for me.' What we are here today to learn is how to use critical thinking and the language of critical thought when we write about an artwork. If you want to say, 'Many people admire this poem, but others, including the writer of this paper, find it a failure,' then you have to be ready to pull that poem apart and show the person who's reading your paper why it doesn't work. 'I just don't like it,' doesn't cut the mustard. If you were a lawyer, you wouldn't represent your client by saying, 'Well, I don't think he's guilty and he told me he didn't do it, so please let him go.' Your job is to come up with proofs and defenses of your statements from the existing evidence - which, in this case, is - the poem."
And this was when the classroom discussion really took off. We pulled those poems apart and put them back together again. We decided that the key line in that wheelbarrow poem is "so much depends." That's the line that creates the tension. That's the line that creates curiosity. That's the line that makes the poem.
Because if WCW's first line had been, "I looked at" instead of "So much depends" - well, then, we would probably be perfectly justified in saying, "Yeah? So what?"
But that first line gets us thinking. Why does so much depend on that wheelbarrow? What kind of life-or-death situation could possibly depend on a wheelbarrow? WCW said "so much" - so, it's gotta be important. We came up with scenarios. We play guessing games. And ultimately - like the poet himself - we wonder what it means. That sneaky WCW. He strung together 16 short, easy words that every kindergarten student knows. And, whaddaya know? He got us all thinking.
And what is my opinion of the the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens?
I'm not going to tell you. But you can bet your boots I've got one.
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