Red Wheelbarrow Poem

Words: 374
Pages: 2

Carlos William's poem, “Red Wheelbarrow”, can be perceived as a statement on how every person has their separate ideas of the world and that we convey them in our own ways as well. Much like art, the way one person perceives what is given to them can be vastly different from another. Perhaps F.J. Bergmann decided to parody William’s poem as a way to ‘comically’ convey how she perceived the “Red Wheelbarrow”. Within “An Apology” the speaker merely smashes the wheelbarrow and insinuates that the chickens were affected as well, all due to the rain. This demonstrates that Bergmann probably perceived the objects with William’s poem as nothing but that, inconvenient objects.
Bergmann parodies the simple aspects of the poem “Red Wheelbarrow”, meaning she blatantly humor’s William’s perspective of plain objects hiding greater symbolism. Within Bergmann’s poem she illustrates her “apology” towards the owner of the wheelbarrow and chickens, seeing as she may have run them over with her “new plum-colored SUV”. I do not find Bergmann’s comedic perception to be unfair towards William’s original poem. Bergmann is simply doing what poets, and all literary writers, “depend upon”: the varying perception of their written work by the audience.
In my opinion, Bergmann’s true purpose within parodying William’s poem,
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The idea that “no ideas but in things” brings up the perception that all things that we perceive are easily brought up and can bring up additional ideas along with it. For instance, William’s poem is very vague, whenever I read about the red wheelbarrow, I simply imagined how I would perceive the wheelbarrow. However, I began to wonder what the wheelbarrow symbolized and this allowed myself to form my own ideas of what it stood for. This is perhaps what William’s true intention for writing “Red Wheelbarrow”, the idea of perceiving something in your own ways, rather than having the writer detail it out for