The Red Wheelbarrow and This is Just to Say

William Carlos Williams uses imagery and sensory details to turn ordinary objects—a wheelbarrow and plums—into the subjects of his poems. He calls attention to ordinary scenes by emphasizing visual details, so that what is ordinary becomes almost extraordinary. He also uses only a few words in each line to allow readers to listen to each word, so that each word becomes significant and contributes to the poem’s meaning. Write a poem of your own in which the subject is an ordinary object from everyday life. Use Williams’s poems as models and try to include similar poetic techniques in your poem.