Intro
A poem like William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow" seems to demand a close reading. It's so short that every word suddenly seems extremely important. So it's not surprising that the New Critics were the ones to really unpack this work's meaning. Those dudes were on this poem like Shmoop's staff on cookie sandwiches.
In the book that became the textbook for students of poetry (Understanding Poetry), Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren present their analysis of this poem. "The Red Wheelbarrow" can seem arbitrary and puzzling, but that's exactly the point, they argue.
In paying close attention to such a little moment, and describing it in such a few words, Williams's poem makes us see common objects in a fresh way. (Um, doesn't this sound a lot like what the New Critics did for us when they analyzed old works?) The piece has an effect on readers that's kind of like what would happen if you framed a random grocery list: Would you read it differently then?
The opening lines of "The Red Wheelbarrow" kick off the "pay attention now" puzzle with the "so much depends" line. So much depends on what, huh?
Quote
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
Analysis
When Brooks and Warren read this poem, they keep returning to that whopper of a first line:
The only line of 'Red Wheelbarrow' that is not absolutely arbitrary is the first, which does have a certain intrinsic structure, the structure of a clause. The lining is so arbitrary that we have to see the poem in print before we have any notion that it is intended as a poem at all. But the very arbitrariness is the point. We are forced to focus our attention upon words, and details, in a very special way, a puzzling way. Now the poem itself is about that puzzling portentousness than an object, even the simplest, like a red wheelbarrow, assumes when we fix attention exclusively upon it. Reading the poem is like peering at some ordinary object through a pin prick in a piece of cardboard. The fact that the pin prick frames it arbitrarily endows it with a puzzling and exciting freshness that seems to hover on the verge of revelation. And that is what the poem is actually about: 'So much depends'—but what, we do not know.
See, "The Red Wheelbarrow" does exactly what New Criticism does: it forces us "to focus our attention upon words, and details." If there were a DIY starter kit for learning New Criticism, it might involve a copy of this poem and a piece of cardboard with a hole poked in it.
Rock on, young micro-analyzers.