The Red Wheelbarrow

by William Carlos Williams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

This 1938 poem is from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909–1939. The Imagist reputation of this poem is countered by the first two lines, which present an intellectual intrusion on the image. A haiku poet would omit the first two lines, but would likely still believe that so much depends on the image of every haiku, as indeed it does. This poem states what the haiku poet would leave unstated.