Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Now if I sound like I'm in a tunnel, it's because, well, it's because I'm recording this from my iPhone due to some technical issues.

But I wanted to get you a poem anyway. And the poem scheduled for today is by William Carlos

Williams, who is one of my favorite poets. He lived from 1883 to 1963, and this is probably his

most famous poem. It's called The Red Wheelbarrow. It's certainly one of his two most anthologized poems. This poem was originally published without a title.

I was just designated with the Roman numeral 22, so X-X-I-I. It comes from a collection called Spring and All,

which included both free verse poetry and some prose. After I read it, I'm going to share some words

from another one of my favorite poets about this poem, because I think that they get to the heart

of what's going on here, better than I could express it in just a couple of minutes. So this is a very

short poem. It's definitely the shortest poem that I have read on this show thus far, and it will

probably be the shortest poem or one of the shortest poems you will hear on this show.

So this may not be a long episode, but I do hope that you like this poem if you haven't heard

it already.

Many of you probably encountered it in school.

It goes like this.

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens.

That's the whole poem. So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens.

Wendell Berry has a book about William Carlos Williams poetry.

It's called The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford.

And in many ways, Williams and Barry are kindred spirits, I think.

They're both highly attuned to the places that they come from.

For Barry, it's the rural countryside of Kentucky. For Williams, it's Rutherford and Patterson,

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