Abstract: In the Poetry Analysis assignment, two different poems were to be compared, identifying the relationships and connections between the text and their relation during today versus previous times, along with identifying the differences between the poem and the literary devices used. I analyzed the poems “Rain at Night” by Andrew Frisardi, and “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos William.

This assignment helped with negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre and medium, and rhetorical situation.

 

 

Maxim Zorkin

ENGL 21001

Professor Carpenter

2/22/24

                                      Poetry Analysis

The characterization of certain things as important is as with many things in life subjective. And in today’s world the hierarchy of importance is dependent on what’s the most well known, what everyone wants, or what is influencing the most change in the world. And the subjective nature of these hierarchies will mean that the importance of things in the world will vary to many different points of view. And so there are always subversions to the categorization of importance, especially with the philosophy of this topic today, where even the most ordinary and seemingly redundant occurrences in life demonstrate importance which can be revealed with closer observation. The two poems, “Rain at Night” by Andrew Frisardi, and “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos William are literature which focus on such occurrences. “Rain at Night” is a narration of rainfall upon a city and its hidden journey and work as it passes through its urban setting, and “The Red Wheelbarrow” is a short poem which illustrates a simple scene of a wheelbarrow amongst its environment. These two poems, “Rain at Night” and “The Red Wheelbarrow” both share a key message of the nature of importance as possessing the power to aid and sustain.

Even at initially reading the two poems, it can be easily observed that the two poems, “Rain at Night” and “The Red Wheelbarrow” share much in common. Despite their difference in length, both are written in stanzas of two sentences. Both poems feature rainwater, and by inspecting the content of the poems it can be made clear that they both prominently feature a theme of nature. In many cases, poems whose focus is on the subject of nature can be seen using a lot of imagery. The first stanza of “Rain at Night” follows: “The city lies back in its winding sheet / While little digits drum a steady beat” and just two stanzas of the four-stanza poem of “The Red Wheelbarrow” follow as: “a red wheel / barrow // glazed with rain / water”. Themes of nature with usage of imagery are a common pairing in literature as it is a very effective device for pronouncing the other elements in the writing such as mood and tone which the writer is tying to the theme. Moods such as serenity and calmness are also well observed in themes of nature which happen to be shared by the two poems. In “The Red Wheelbarrow”, the last two stanzas feature key significance in establishing the setting for the reader to conjure and the specific mood which the writer intends for his narrative: “[the wheelbarrow] glazed with rain / water // beside the white / chickens”. The setting of a rural landscape and the wheelbarrow sprinkled with droplets after rainfall creates a peaceful mood which allows the reader to align their focus with the main subject which is the wheelbarrow. “Rain at Night” also establishes a comparable mood with lines such as “While little digits drum a steady beat” in the first stanza and “The sleeping people feel it wash wash wash” in the third stanza. These lines inform the reader that the rainfall lacks any harshness as it falls in “little digits” on the roofs of the sleeping city.

The relations between the imagery and the gentle tones of “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “Rain at Night” can both point to the hidden and unappreciated natures of the subjects in the two poems which are both left unacknowledged, and both the wheelbarrow and the rain exist in an environment where certain things depend on their presence for sustainment.

Despite these similarities, “Rain at Night” and “The Red Wheelbarrow” are also seen with some greatly contrasting features which pertain to their individual themes that play a greater role than just the general theme of nature. “Rain at Night” is a poem which also describes the hidden properties of the rain in its passage throughout the city, establishing its cleansing powers in washing away the dirt and metaphorically lost and buried dreams: “As buried wishes loosen from debris / And multitudes of deltas meet the sea”. The unchanging progression of rainfall and its rapid passage through the city is conveyed through the couplet rhyming scheme featured throughout the poem. “Rain at Night” also uses the metaphor of a masseuse to demonstrate the power of the rain to change its surroundings despite its gentle force, seen in the fifth stanza as: “Hands like these may be minute, / But such masseuses’ touches work the root”. Such metaphors and adjacent literary elements in “Rain at Night” establish the themes of nature’s permanence in places as artificial as cities and the power to change in even the most gentle of its forces. Compared to “Rain at Night”, “The Red Wheelbarrow” is structured very differently, being a free verse poem. The setting of the poem is very still, there is almost no movement for the reader to pick up on apart from the white chickens. The stillness of the setting is also accentuated by the poem’s lack of capitalization, and the enjambment of the last word of a sentence into the second line every stanza which creates a stiff pace. These elements all aid in isolating the red wheelbarrow from its  vague surroundings, and the sole context the reader is given for this wheelbarrow is the first stanza of the poem, “so much depends / upon”. This stanza, despite its vagueness, adds on an entire layer for this poem to analyze, establishing the importance of the wheelbarrow in the operations of its users in the context of a rural setting, such as carrying loads important for farmwork. What the poem accomplishes is that by giving a single statement on the wheelbarrow, it can be taken from a redundant object to an integral part of a worker or family’s lifestyle.

The message behind “The Red Wheelbarrow” is a reflection of the way different things are judged in terms of their importance, and how these categorizations are subjective as even the most mundane of things, like a red wheelbarrow on a farm can have real significance to parts and aspects of its environment which depend on it.  What these subjective lists also fail to do is recognize that many things in life don’t need to be of benefit to the masses or have the power to influence change to be important, they just need to sustain the systems or lifestyles of what is around it. This reality is exactly what the two poems “Rain at Night” and “The Red Wheelbarrow” share in common. The rain is a force that acts unknown in the midst of the city as it sleeps, and even to those awake is seen as simply an occurrence. But the rain’s true significance is in its role to keep the city clean: the dirt and grime which sits beneath the city is cleansed by the rain, and metaphorically, the dreams which lie buried and forgotten are also washed away. And the rain itself also finds itself back into the sea, depicted in the last stanza as “And multitudes of deltas meet the sea” for the cycle to repeat itself later. Both “Rain at Night” and “The Red Wheelbarrow” depict their key subjects as unacknowledged, existing in obscurity even initially to the reader, yet a deeper glimpse reveals that even though their impact is small, there are always things that thrive from their presence.