The Red Wheelbarrow

If you're looking for a more creative pursuit, start your budding literary career in the bathroom! You can write a short story or poem on a single trip to the toilet that makes you famous instantaneously. Which American Imagist poet of the twentieth century probably could have written his eight-line poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" in three minutes on the commode?

Make the most use of your bathroom time.

He was also a practicing doctor for most of his life, is best-known for his short poem "The Red Wheelbarrow", reproduced in full below.


"so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens"

Rather than attempt to explain the deep meaning of why "so much" depends upon the red wheelbarrow, I will instead quote another Williams poem, this one entitled "This Is Just To Say".

"I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"

--William Carlos Williams

There, don't you think you could do that sitting on the toilet some day?