PAD Day 29: Trashing Dr. Bill

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a "nobody knows" poem, and
(2) Write a poem in the form of a review.

So here's the deal.  I know I still want to write a "serious" poem today because the judge at Poetic Asides is Marge Piercy, one of my favorite poets, with whom I worked for a week in a workshop a few summers ago, and whom I know best of all this month's judges. (See my prior blog entry here for a chronicle of my experience, one of the best weeks I ever spent with poetry.) But I had so much fun responding to the NaPoWriMo prompt that I had to post it early. I'll post another poem later once it comes to me.  This may not qualify as a "poem", and it's certainly not a serious trashing of one my favorite poets of all time, but like I said, it was fun.

Poetry Review

 

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickensso much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickensso much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickensso much depends

upon  

a red wheel

barrow  

glazed with rain

water  

beside the white

chickens 

William Carlos Williams’  latest poem is a study in obfuscation. 

How can only sixteen words

(or fifteen, if one reconnects the maddeningly dissected “wheelbarrow”)

be so obscure and confusing?   

He begins with a statement that “so much depends”

on this piece of farm equipment. What exactly does depend on it?

Apparently, it’s been left out in the rain –

an object thus abandoned would seem to have outlived

its utility, in this humble writer’s opinion.

Methinks that not much really depends

on a wheeled hopper left to rust in the elements.  

And why state the obvious regarding the hue of this device?  

Everyone knows that wheelbarrows are red.   

Regarding the glazing by rain, of what other substance

would rain be composed other than water? 

This writer has never seen motor oil or orange juice

fall from the sky.  The fact that it sits beside the white chickens

seems trivial and coincidental at best.

Of course there are chickens – this is a farm, for pity’s sake. 

And is it really significant that they are white? 

The unusual line breaks only further confound the issues

in the poem, the aforementioned fracture of  “wheelbarrow”

being one such example.  Conceits such as this only help perpetuate

the distressing trends in today’s poetry, which include

the abandonment of classical themes, rhyme and meter,

and even sensible, syntactical arrangement of the words.

If Dr. Williams were not so busy with his medical practice,

and used paper larger than a prescription pad,

perhaps he would have had time to produce a longer,

more substantial poem. As it stands, it is chopped up

like a salad. It could be simplified just by eliminating

the line breaks and unnecessary words: 

So much depends upon a wheelbarrow glazed with rain beside the chickens. 

Congratulations, Dr. Williams – you have written a sentence.

But then we come back to the enigmatic question:

What depends on that goddamned wheelbarrow? 

This writer has lost sleep the last three nights attempting

to decipher its meaning. I guess we will never know. 

-        Reginald Overcrom, The Fusty Review of Literature, December 1962.