The version of the poem used in this study guide appears in: The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939. Ed. Christopher MacGowan (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1938).

Note the parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“The Red Wheelbarrow” is an eight-line, free verse poem with four stanzas of couplets written by the American poet Williams Carlos Williams. Williams was both a writer and a medical doctor, receiving his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1906. This is where he met his friend Ezra Pound, who became a great influence on his writing. Like Pound, Williams was a fundamental poet of the Imagist movement, yet he continued throughout his writing career to experiment with meter and lineation with the intent to seek out a fresh way to depict everyday life and common circumstances. This technique of obscurity in the imagery is clearly present in “The Red Wheelbarrow.” The poem begins with an unclear dependent statement, forcing the reader to question the poem and introducing a sense of mystery in the image that follows.