This Is Just To Say
(Wall poem in The Hague)
"This Is Just to Say" (1934) is an imagist poem[1] by William Carlos Williams. The three-versed, 28-word poem is an apology about eating the reader's plums. The poem was written as if it was a note left on a kitchen table. It has been widely pastiched.[2][3]
Poem
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold[4]
Analysis
The poem appears to the reader like a piece of
iamb) and lines eight and nine (each an amphibrach), no two lines have the same metrical form.[5] The consonance of the letters "Th" in lines two, three, and four, as well the consonance of the letter "F" in lines eight and nine, and the letter 'S' in lines eleven and twelve give rise to a natural rhythm
when the poem is read aloud.
A conspicuous lack of
typographical
structure influences any subsequent interpretation on the part of the reader.
Florence Williams's (Williams's wife) ''reply'' to This Is Just to Say is included as a 'Detail' in the partially published Detail & Parody for the poem Paterson (a manuscript at
SUNY Buffalo)[6] first appearing in 1982.[7] Since Williams chose to include the ''reply'' in his own sequence it seems likely that he took a note left by his wife and turned it into a ''poem''.[6]
References
- ^ "LitCharts". LitCharts. Retrieved 2021-11-19.
- ^ Romano, Aja (2017-12-01). "This is why there are jokes about plums all over your Twitter feed". Vox. Retrieved 2021-11-19.
- ^ "This is just to say… : The parodies of that 'plums' poem just keep coming". The Irish News. 2018-06-07. Retrieved 2021-11-19.
- ^ Foundation, Poetry (2022-10-13). "This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- ^ a b c d "On 'This is Just to Say'". Modern American Poetry. Archived from the original on 2008-12-19. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
- ^ ISBN 1857545222
- ^ The Atlantic Monthly (November 1982) page 145
External links
- Authorised reproduction of the poem
- Modern American Poetry Commentary on the poem Archived 2008-12-19 at the Wayback Machine
- CliffsNotes Analysis of some of the works by William Carlos Williams
- An episode of "This American Life" that features analysis and commentary on the poem
- Read Williams 'Reply' to 'Just to Say'