Anglo-American literary modernism, in the early 20th century, took shape around a poetic movement known as Imagism. Reflecting its name, Imagist writing favours the use of sharp, precise language to present clear images in poetry, and the Imagists—led by modernist guru Ezra Pound—rejected the more sentimental and ornamental Romantic and Victorian poetic styles in favour of a directness and concision in expression—an economy of language in the transmission of ideas from the poet to the reader.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), an American poet and physician, was one such pictorial writer. His famous poem, ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ can be seen as the quintessential Imagist work. Published originally without a title in his 1923 collection Spring and All, the poem comprises a mere four lines, without capitals or punctuation, which carry a weight of meaning.

The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Revolutionary in its simplicity, the poem signals the importance of agriculture to everything (‘so much’), as farm labour is encapsulated in the image of the wheelbarrow—given a classic bold colour and a shine following a rain shower, and a prominent place beside the equally crucial chickens. Altogether the clean imagery conveys the natural purity of a farm—and the sheer magnitude of what it gives to the world.