Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

This Is Just to Say

(1934)


William Carlos Williams

(September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963)

 



I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
 
and which 5
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
 
Forgive me
they were delicious 10
so sweet
and so cold

 

 

Sample Student Responses to William Carlos Williams's "This Is Just to Say" 


Study Question: What is reading? How do you read? Some students have said that reading for them is escaping, asking questions, imagining, remembering, evaluating, and listening. Examine your own act of reading. What mental processes do you engage in when you read a poem in this unit. In a paragraph or two, show how that poem has urged you to read in a certain way.


Response 1:


 

 

 

 

 

Danai Hengtrakul

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 3, 2009

Reading Response #1

 

Breakfast vs. Delicious Plums

 

Two people depend on “the plums / that were in / the icebox” in Williams’ “This Is Just to Say.”  For the unseen “you,” the reader of this message, they are breakfast.  For the speaker, they are more than that.  The understated title, for all its trivial anticipation, actually announces a complex string of serious comparisons.  Reading the poem as a contrastive display of wants and values releases the true juiciness of Williams’ provocative act. 

It is not only that he has eaten the plums (past tense, sin committed), and the “you” was waiting till later (future intention, object not consumed), but also conning us into sympathizing with that defiant and remorseless stance, forgetting that the other party has been deprived of a meal, and one so important as that which will break a night-long fast.  We are asked to weigh the value of two worthies.  On the one hand there is breakfast, on the other, plums—the same thing but meaningfully different.  One is tasteless, the other “delicious / so sweet / and so cold.”  One is probable, the other certain; deferred vs. immediate gratification.  Planned (“saving / for”) vs. unplanned.  Singular vs. plural.  Categorical vs. specific.  Of the two that hang in the balance, Williams seems to claim that your preserving of staid, conventional bodily sustenance is not worth my now joltingly flavorful sensual nourishment.  In this poem so short and sweet, reading is simply comparing: your thing vs. my aesthetic.

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

Links

 

 

William Carlos Williams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home  |  Introduction to the Study of English Literature  |  Literary Terms   

Last updated May 30, 2012