Universality in ‘This is just to say’

William Carlos Williams is one of the most influential poets of early 20^th Century. At first he was well known with his imagist poems, following Pound on this direction. Although being a doctor, he valued poetry and he wrote many poems which were put into anthologies as pioneer poetry to show people how it was done. ‘This is just to say’ is one good example of it, both with its content and form.

To start with its form it supports basic elements of being a modern poem. It has its own meter and rhyme, it has enjambments, and there is no punctuation mark. When someone read it ‘I have eaten / the plums / that were in’, at first it may seem that it is only a note attached on refrigerator written to her wife probably. But a close reading is enough to understand it is actually a poem which became well known during times of its publication and later on counted as an avant-garde of a movement and put in to anthologies. So what makes it worth to read and be put into an anthology? What does it deal with? What is its aim? Or is there an aim?

First of all it must be counted as important as WCW is one of the most influential writers of the era. Then this poem is a basic sample for a modern poetry as its form and content which looks like an apology note this time, but in any case it shows us that topic of a work might be anything ordinary, anything related to one’s daily life as ‘Forgive me/  they were delicious’. And its title blends with the poem perfectly. As being an imagist it is normal that this poem also captures a moment from his own life.

The aim of the poem is to apology. Though there are many critics who say that eating all the plums and being not able to stop oneself with a temptation, it resembles the fall of Adam and Eve, or some says that this is about his leaving her wife by eating all plumbs, it means breaking her heart. But of course those depictions are not certain, the importance of the poem comes with this idea. It is open to variety of interpretation.

Besides anyone who reads this poem can think about the situation and related it to them. Since almost everybody lives this kind of situation no matter with their mother or wife, everybody eat or take something by knowing that they shouldn’t do it. Then everybody who reads it can think of their own interpretation about this poem.

So basically WCW leaves this open to interpretation, is it this simple or is there any meaning underlying? But actually whoever reads this poem; one common thing comes to mind which is this common experience. So this is basically shows us its own universality, even though there are many different interpretations when one reads it directly thinks about their own experiences.