so much depends
July 6, 2015 11:54 PM Subscribe
"On July 18, in a moment of belated poetic justice, a stone will be laid on the otherwise unmarked grave of Thaddeus Marshall, an African-American street vendor from Rutherford, N.J., noting his unsung contribution to American literature."
But Mr. Logan, a professor at the University of Florida who has contributed to The New York Times Book Review, may have taken the poem’s fullest measure yet. His roughly 10,000-word essay on the poem, published in the most recent issue of the literary journal Parnassus and titled simply “The Red Wheelbarrow,” considers the poem from seemingly every conceivable angle.
Turns out the wheelbarrow was full of beans.
posted by chavenet at 12:34 AM on July 7, 2015 [7 favorites]
Turns out the wheelbarrow was full of beans.
posted by chavenet at 12:34 AM on July 7, 2015 [7 favorites]
Such a sweet story.
posted by maggiemaggie at 3:31 AM on July 7, 2015
posted by maggiemaggie at 3:31 AM on July 7, 2015
Thanks - my partner was telling me about this article last night and I was intending to find and post it this morning.
posted by aught at 5:44 AM on July 7, 2015
posted by aught at 5:44 AM on July 7, 2015
Williams’s 16-word poem, first published in 1923, was hailed as a manifesto of plain-spoken American modernism.
Sixteen words, though to be fair it was originally a section of the long poem "Spring and All" and a certain amount of its aesthetic message comes from that context (I'll restrain myself from rattling on - full disclosure, I wrote a 10-page paper on it in college myself.)
It's also interesting to note the poet/scholar who did the detective work on Marshall's contribution to Williams' famous poem (and wrote the long essay on the poem noted in the article) is William Logan, who rose to some degree of infamy a decade or two ago for his (to some, needlessly) harsh and dismissive reviews of well-known poets, particularly free-verse and experimental poets (Logan himself writes formal poems).
posted by aught at 6:07 AM on July 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sixteen words, though to be fair it was originally a section of the long poem "Spring and All" and a certain amount of its aesthetic message comes from that context (I'll restrain myself from rattling on - full disclosure, I wrote a 10-page paper on it in college myself.)
It's also interesting to note the poet/scholar who did the detective work on Marshall's contribution to Williams' famous poem (and wrote the long essay on the poem noted in the article) is William Logan, who rose to some degree of infamy a decade or two ago for his (to some, needlessly) harsh and dismissive reviews of well-known poets, particularly free-verse and experimental poets (Logan himself writes formal poems).
posted by aught at 6:07 AM on July 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Great research and article. Can I say how much I love that the scholar's name is also William? A conspiracy of Williams.
“When we read this poem in an anthology, we tend not to think of the chickens as real chickens, but as platonic chickens, some ideal thing,” William Logan, the scholar who recently discovered Mr. Marshall’s identity, said in an interview.
I love the royal "we" in this sentence. Also, "Platonic Chickens" would be a great band name.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 6:44 AM on July 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
“When we read this poem in an anthology, we tend not to think of the chickens as real chickens, but as platonic chickens, some ideal thing,” William Logan, the scholar who recently discovered Mr. Marshall’s identity, said in an interview.
I love the royal "we" in this sentence. Also, "Platonic Chickens" would be a great band name.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 6:44 AM on July 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wonder if Mr. Marshall had a plum tree?
posted by jim in austin at 6:58 AM on July 7, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 6:58 AM on July 7, 2015 [3 favorites]
We should have an annual Thaddeus Marshall celebration day here, given how much influence he ended up having on Metafilter.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:27 AM on July 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:27 AM on July 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
though to be fair it was originally a section of the long poem "Spring and All"
Spring and All is a collection of poems and short prose pieces (prose poems, if you like); I don't think you can really call it "a long poem" of which the red wheelbarrow piece forms a "section." Although it's certainly true that the various pieces in the collection all inform each other in important ways.
posted by yoink at 8:54 AM on July 7, 2015
Spring and All is a collection of poems and short prose pieces (prose poems, if you like); I don't think you can really call it "a long poem" of which the red wheelbarrow piece forms a "section." Although it's certainly true that the various pieces in the collection all inform each other in important ways.
posted by yoink at 8:54 AM on July 7, 2015
This is really interesting - he was one (tiny) town over from me and this hasn't popped up on local news.
posted by blaneyphoto at 7:38 PM on July 7, 2015
posted by blaneyphoto at 7:38 PM on July 7, 2015
Spring and All is a collection of poems and short prose pieces (prose poems, if you like); I don't think you can really call it "a long poem" of which the red wheelbarrow piece forms a "section." Although it's certainly true that the various pieces in the collection all inform each other in important ways.
I guess I always saw it as a unified work, where the prose sections kind of set out or clarify the aesthetic agenda and snippets of poems like "TRW" put those more abstract ideas into practice. Maybe the fact that TRW and the almost as famous first section of Spring and All didn't even have their own titles, in the original, influenced me to see them as aspects of the larger whole. YMMV obviously...
posted by aught at 9:00 AM on July 8, 2015
I guess I always saw it as a unified work, where the prose sections kind of set out or clarify the aesthetic agenda and snippets of poems like "TRW" put those more abstract ideas into practice. Maybe the fact that TRW and the almost as famous first section of Spring and All didn't even have their own titles, in the original, influenced me to see them as aspects of the larger whole. YMMV obviously...
posted by aught at 9:00 AM on July 8, 2015
Missed this one, just attempted to post a double. Oops. And yes, this is a fantastic story. I love that its happening.
posted by Fizz at 12:56 PM on July 9, 2015
posted by Fizz at 12:56 PM on July 9, 2015
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posted by growabrain at 12:16 AM on July 7, 2015