The Red Wheel barrow.

I love poetry. Really, I do. Its fantastic honestly, even if you aren't analyzing it every Monday Wednesday and Friday at 11:30 you can enjoy it. Read some, and it will be enjoyable. Especially if it's Dr. Suess because that man had it goin' ON! But I digress.

Poetry is food for the soul. (unless your soul isn't hungry right Marissa?)

But there is one poem that has been plaguing me. Bringing me anxiety and stress and inner turmoil and pressure! It's an extremely famous poem. A poem that has had many papers and interpretations put into it.

The Red Wheelbarrow

By: William Carlos Williams

So much depends

upon

A red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Yeah that's it. Read that sucker a few times. Now pretend you have a huge test on it, where you have to w rite a paper on the symbolic meaning of this poem. Please tell me you feel as lost as I do?

But apparently, I am the only one who feels that there is NOTHING going on in this poem other than some rain on a wheel barrow and some chickens chillin' next to it?

Alas, I fear I am.

Let me share the various interpretations I have heard.

Hipster Jeff

Oh Hipster Jeff, how I love that deranged yet incredibly attractive child. Hipster Jeff read through that gem of a poem, and turned it into an analogy of the cold war. The flippin cold war people! 16 words and 2 minutes later he comes up with the Cold War. Obviously the red wheel barrow is a symbol of communism, because red...Russia...Communism... You know? The white chickens are a symbol of democracy and America. ( Which personally I find to be an insult to America, because chickens are not exactly a shining example of brains and wit) The rain water is a symbol of the Cold war itself. Pretty deep right? Oh, it doesn't end there ladies and gents. Hipster Jeff took it a step further. He extrapolated from that analogy to make yet another brilliant point. What with all the rain that is going on, eventually the wheel barrow is going to rust over and become useless, whereas the chickens aren't going to be harmed by the rain (unless they drown...which is another story). SO! Communism is going to be defeated somewhat by the Cold War and Democracy and America is going to survive.

Yes, all this from that poem. Genius! Or madness!

My Bff Jill...who is actually named David Cardon.

Oh David. David david david david Harold David. That boy. Whatta goofball! Whilst I was trying to find some meaning in this wheel barrow rubbish I was textin Davie boy. And I will not even lie, I was bein a little bit of a brat. Because frustration breeds brattyness. And brattyness breeds hilarious voicemails from David. Can you tell he likes to leave voicemails? Yeah I don't actually know what why...but they are entertaining. So I texted him the poem and told him to figure out what it meant. In the most rude and snotty way possible. Why he puts up with me I do not know. SO! Here's what Dave had to say.

The poem is about a guy, who fell in love with a farm girl. And the first time he saw her she was pushing a red wheel barrow full of feed for her chickens in the rain. Their eyes met and there was a spark, a flame, a burning desire. And boom! They fell in love. So now whenever the man sees chickens and wheel barrows in the rain, he thinks of his farm girl.

Pretty impressive for such a goofy child right? I was blown away from that interpretation as well.

Which leads me to the point.

I'm pretty sure that William Carlos Williams, was writing about a red wheel barrow. In the rain. With chickens. No hidden agenda, no cold war symbolism, no love story.

I think he wrote it so that English majors would wrack their brains for some ridiculous deeper meaning, and he could laugh his face off. And so people like me would be utterly stumped for no good reason.

What do you think?

Thank you. That is all.