so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

--William Carlos Williams

A couple of weeks ago I was driving to the UTD campus where I’m taking a class in the poetry of William Carlos Williams and T. S. Eliot. Suddenly the radio traffic reporter announced that a wheelbarrow parked in the middle of a highway lane was blocking traffic.

I wondered what color it was. I wondered if a poet put it there. I wondered how much depended on it. I wondered if this class was getting to me.

Last week we hiked down to the beach in Oregon with my brother. He pointed out some sites in the woods where he told us he’d camped. Yet there was no road. “How did you get your stuff down here?” I asked. He told me the government provided wheelbarrows at the trailhead for lugging in gear. Bet you know what I wondered.

I will send a free copy of Espresso with Esther to the first artist of any age who sends me a drawing of a red wheelbarrow.

On Monday I have to do a huge presentation on T. S. Eliot’s poem, “Ash Wednesday.” I should have signed up to exegete Williams. Wheelbarrows I get. But with Eliot so much depends on a thorough knowledge of classical Greek, Latin, French, Ezra Pound, Dante...

I like Eliot. Really. I just don’t “get” him. One thing I especially appreciate—he talks about how much we should read dead authors and how few of us actually do. What was the last book you read by a dead author? Why did you read it?

Meanwhile, check out this commencement address by none other than the quick (as opposed to dead) Stephen King, which Leigh McLeroy brought to my attention.