Poetry for All

Transcript of Episode 25: William Carlos Williams ÒThis is Just to SayÓ

[intro music]

Abram:

Hello, IÕm Abram Van Engen.

Joanne:

And IÕm Joanne Diaz.

Abram:

And this is _Poetry for All_.

Joanne:

In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.

Abram:

And today, weÕre going to read and discuss ÒThis is Just to SayÓ by William Carlos Williams. Joanne? Before we begin our discussion, would you be willing to read that poem for us?

Joanne:

Yes I would! ÒThis is Just to SayÓ: [click on this link for the poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56159/this-is-just-to-say] 

Abram:

And thatÕs it.

Joanne:

And thatÕs it!

Abram:

[laughing] ThatÕs it!

Joanne:

Love it!

Abram:

[laughing] I love it! So short, so simple, so awesome! YouÕve talked about this poem a lot of times when you teach it to students in a poetry course. What kind of reactions do you get to this poem?

Joanne:

I teach this in my Introduction to Literary Studies course and when I do, students are often really _angry_.

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

ThereÕs a few moments that I consistently have that are like this with students. When students see and hear this poem, they get so upset because they donÕt see any craft, they donÕt see any artifice, they donÕt see anything thatÕs ornate or deliberately calling attention to itself as a poem.

Abram:

So what makes this a poem then?

Joanne:

Well, when you read this poem, like, maybe we can do with this poem what weÕve often done with others, and sort of break down the ways in which it _might_ be a poem and not just--and of course just to note, it feels very immediate, very basic, very terse--but if for the purposes of this podcast we can talk about it as a poem, what are the things that leap out at you right away?

Abram:

So first, for me, it _does_ have stanzas. It _does_ have line breaks, and so one of the things that I think is particularly relevant about this poem and kind of difficult to talk about on a podcast is that poetry these days is as much visual as it oral. That is to say that the white space matters, the line breaks matter, and itÕs hard to _see_ the line breaks when youÕre just listening to a podcast. But ÒI have eaten,Ó line break, Òthe plums,Ó line break, Òthat were in,Ó line break, Òthe icebox,Ó stanza. If you wrote this out as a simple sentence, it would not have the same effect as writing it out as a poem with line breaks and stanza breaks. And the other thing that you notice, that first of all that the line breaks kind of force you to pause, a little bit. ThereÕs a kind of mental pause that  going on. So ÒThis is Just to Say,Ó is the title and you pause and then Òwhat _is_ he going to say?,Ó ÒI have eaten,Ó ÒWhat have you eaten?,Ó right? And you kind of go through and thereÕs a little pause. But thereÕs also this kind of remarkable--for an _incredibly_ simple poem--hereÕs a few words that stand out: ÒsavingÓ on its own line, Òforgive meÓ on its own line, and then this simple repetitive end Òso sweet / and so cold.Ó ThereÕs actually a thing going on here, right? There actually _is_ structure and purpose and design and craft going on here.

Joanne:

Okay, I think thatÕs absolutely right. So your attention to line breaks, I completely agree with that. In an interview from many years ago, an American poet, Stanley Kunitz once said that Òevery line of poetry should feel like a station of the cross.Ó

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

Which feels very dramatic and alarming! And certainly I think he meant it in that way, but I think what he was trying to say is that every single line of a poem should carry essential information that leaves you on a cliff like that, right? So what you just did with that first stanza--that first quatrain--ÒI have eaten,Ó Òwhat have you eaten?,Ó Òthe plums,Ó Òthat were in? What were they in?,Ó Òthe iceboxÓ--that as basic and simple as this language seems, it sets up three stanzas--and of course that word ÒstanzaÓ comes from the Italian for ÒroomÓ--and again, as tiny as this is, there are three little rooms that we inhabit in this poem. So the first little room tells us a concluded act has occurred. The plums have been eaten. And notice that heÕs not in the _process_ of eating them, he is not _planning_ on eating them, they have eaten. They are gone.

Abram:

[laughing] ThereÕs no permission asked.

Joanne:

No!

Abram:

There is only forgiveness.

Joanne:

No! You will not see those plums again. They have been eaten. _But_ already though we know that they were in the icebox. Now that interests me because itÕs not a refrigerator and when I ask my students what an icebox is, they usually do not know that it was a large box in which you put a giant chunk of ice. The ice man came every day and especially in summer when food can spoil so easily, you really counted on that delivery of the ice and it would melt throughout the day. And so whatever you put in that icebox had to be really precious and worth saving. So already that first quatrain tells us a lot about the world in which these plums are situated and a poetic speaker that has already taken care of them. But what about when we get to the second stanza? What kind of room is that?

Abram:

So this interests me, because now you create a whole narrative scenario of relationship between two people. We know thereÕs two people at the beginning because we get this address, right? ÒThis is Just to Say,Ó saying it to somebody, right? But _now_ we get this whole narrative element, which is this fruit was not for him. [laughs]

Joanne:

[laughs]

Abram:

He _took_ the fruit! He says Òyou were probably saving that for breakfast,Ó well _now_ this person doesnÕt have breakfast and on the one hand you think Òthis is a small thingÓ on the other, ÒweÕre talking about forbidden fruit here.Ó [laughs]

Joanne:

Yeah.

Abram:

WeÕre talking about this guy stealing somebody elseÕs fruit and eating it, and really not caring too much about it.

Joanne:

Well, but he _did_ take the time to write the note now, Abram. Come on, he did at least write the note.

Abram:

Yes!

Joanne:

You know, if he didnÕt care at all, he wouldnÕt have taken that time. But yeah, so now thereÕs the introduction of another individual, so this is now an ÒI/youÓ poem.

Abram:

Yes.

Joanne:

So what happens in the third stanza?

Abram:

One of the things that strikes me about this stanza that feels so complete about this poem is that itÕs almost as if he took the plums and was heading out the door and then ate them and was like Òoh damn. These plums are amazing.Ó And so he leaves the note, almost...itÕs not _really_ an apology. ItÕs more about noticing the amazingness of these plums. And thatÕs one way to read this poem is that it is asking you to notice. And each line, each line break, the fact of the spacing, the fact of the white space, the slowing down a bit, heÕs performing this act of saying the simplest, most ordinary things in the world, ÒI took these plums, I was eating them on my way out the door,Ó require attention and became extraordinary when you slow down and pay attention to them. ÒAnd these plums so stopped me that I had to come back and write about them.Ó

Joanne:

So this is my favorite stanza, and of course I think this is what makes the poem so famous, itÕs a Òsorry, not sorry,Ó yeah? So this is it seems to be a poem that is asking for forgiveness but then it reminds us of why the plums were worth stealing in the first place. And at the risk of making this be a podcast that refers to another podcast that goes to another podcast--you know I donÕt want to go down a vortex or anything--but my all-time favorite podcast is called _Still Processing_ with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham. They have a whole episode on the Òsorry/not sorryÓ apologies that have appeared in recent years on Twitter and other forms of social media, and I think that could be what has--in part--given this poem a kind of second life.

Abram:

Absolutely. And you know, just to stick with that third stanza, one of the only repetitions we get in the poem is this word Òso.Ó ÒSo sweet / and so cold.Ó And I _love_ that ending because that word ÒsoÓ is such an intensifier. It basically what itÕs saying in this poem is saying Òthese words, this language I have is not quite good enough.Ó No amount of language is going to convey to you the experience of just how amazing these plums were. [laughing]

Joanne:

Mhmm.

Abram:

And so it doesnÕt matter if itÕs a rhyming with iambic pentameter, it doesnÕt matter if itÕs short and simple. The point is the language is pointing beyond itself. The ÒsoÓ when you add that to a word, it means that the thing is _more_ than that word itself. ItÕs _so_ sweet that sweet itself is not sufficient unto itself to describe this thing. ItÕs _so_ cold that cold is not sufficient to describe this thing.

Joanne:

So thatÕs really helpful because now IÕm thinking about sound as well as sense, and thatÕs another way in which this feels very poetic to me. Look at that again, at that final stanza just as one example. The majority of these lines are maybe three to five syllables, but the way heÕs thinking about where to drop the beat and how long and short the syllables should be really interests me. ÒForgive me / they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold.Ó Like that really slows me down a bit. The sound makes me linger on the sweetness and coldness.

Abram:

So heÕs intentionally getting you to notice what you might not have noticed.

Joanne:

ThatÕs right. And thatÕs just a simple pattern or repetition that only appears a couple times but itÕs super important to him.

Abram:

And I think it fits with the whole tradition of what heÕs doing. So weÕve talked before in a different episode and said Òwhat makes this a poem?Ó Well, part of what makes a poem a poem is that they _call it_ a poem. [laughs]

Joanne:

Yeah.

Abram:

And when you call something a poem, what youÕre doing is youÕre inserting yourself into a  whole bunch of traditions and youÕre talking back to them. So part of sort of the richness of a poem is where it fits in these various poetic traditions. So talk to me a little bit about how all of this language we just talked about, this bit of structure, this _really_ simplified diction, and so on, how it fits in the kind of traditions that heÕs engaging with at the moment that he writes this poem.

Joanne:

So, when I teach this poem to my students, I also show them a slide of someone who was a pretty big influence on William Carlos Williams. I show them an image of Marcel Duchamp very famous sculpture titled ÒFountain.Ó So ÒFountainÓ caused a stir in the art world because ÒFountainÓ is basically a urinal from a menÕs restroom that is turned on its side and exhibited as art. And this made people crazy! They were so upset about this! It was so controversial. But what Marcel Duchamp was trying to get at was something very conceptual. This notion that instead of assuming that a visual art object required an enormous amount of craft and labor and discipline, what if just by virtue of calling this a work of art and putting it in the space of a gallery that it makes it so. For William Carlos Williams, this was a really intriguing idea because he was trying hard in his poetry to create poems that sort of captured the American idiom. He was looking for poetry that was just stripped of ornamentation, stripped of artifice, he wanted immediacy, he wanted a freshness, and a liveness and energy that he felt best represented the way we actually speak in America.

Abram:

So thereÕs this huge maze in historical context that makes this simple poem so much richer but the poem doesnÕt just _live_ in its historical context in that moment, pre-World War II. It in fact accrues readers through the years, and this poem itself takes on new life, and new life, and becomes something more and more as readers encounter it. And one of the things I love to do with this poem is just to talk to folks about how poems meet readers because different readers meet poems differently. And if this is not the kind of poem that meets you, thereÕs two things: one, you can move on, thereÕs other poems, but two, is to ask yourself Òwhy _does_ this produce and generate such a response in so many readers?Ó And so one of the questions is Òhow has this poem met readersÓ and Òhow does it continue to meet readers.Ó

Joanne:

You know, you read a poem like this, it is so canonical. So many people have encountered it in high school or in college, and you just sort of move on with your day and donÕt think about it. A poem about plums in the icebox though that were probably being saved for breakfast takes on a whole new valence when in the early days of the pandemic, youÕre like spraying down your shoes with Lysol every time you walk in and out of the grocery store, right? On Twitter there were several different takes on the poem, you know, regarding scarcity and abundance and how important it is to not steal other peopleÕs food.

Abram:

[laughing]

Joanne:

You see a poem can also take on a political valence. So for example, immediately following the election in 2020, Celeste Ng had an interesting spin on this poem. She wrote ÒI have scheduled the press conference that was at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping.Ó

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

ÒIn which you were probably saving for the Four Seasons Hotel.Ó

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

ÒForgive me. It is hilarious. So sweet and so cold.Ó

Abram:

[laughing] ThatÕs amazing.

Joanne:

[laughing] IÕll just leave that there. But then, but _then_--even as far back as 2017 on Twitter--there was a whole thing where when there was an increase in the number of characters you could add to a Twitter post--you know people were having more fun with this because the poem was _just_ big enough to parody on Twitter and you could have room for it. So they would post tweets to the tune of Mr. Brightside by the Killers, right? [singing] ÒNow IÕm fallinÕ asleep and sheÕs eating my black plums. Now heÕs opened the icebox and sheÕs taking a plum.Ó Another person, Megan McCarrin, she rewrote ÒThis is Just to SayÓ to the tune of ÒI Want it That WayÓ by the Backstreet Boys, right? This is nice: [singing in tune of ÒI Want it That WayÓ] Òplums are my fire. The sweet desire. This is just to say, I want it--Ó and it goes on.

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

IÕll spare you, you know, my singing. But my favorite, Elon Musk, who is you know, active on Twitter. You know, itÕs fun to respond to tweets with this William Carlos Williams structure. So you know, Elon Musk on July 12th, he wrote on Twitter: Òthose who would tax space maybe donÕt realize that space represents hope for so many people.Ó Yes! Yes, Elon Musk, it does! That is correct! I donÕt think that people are attacking space though. So my favorite cultural critic, historian, writer, Rebecca Solnit, she decided to channel the spirit of William Carlos Williams and respond to Elon MuskÕs tweet. And then sheÕs sort of channeling the voice of Elon Musk as well. ÒThis is just to say, I have burned the fuel that was in the rocket in which you were probably saving because climate. Forgive me it was all about me. So much me and so cold.Ó [laughs]

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

[laughing] Like, itÕs not _space_ that we object to, itÕs the fact that _you_ have enough money to solve some serious world problems and youÕre going up into space in a rocket instead. So you know, I think again, to go back to something we said earlier, itÕs that Òsorry/not sorryÓ structure that a lot of people enjoy playing with.

Abram:

And so, I think the important point to think about here is though that with poetry, what weÕre talking about is that poems acquire lives. And when you encounter a poem for the first time, you may not know both its historical context or its afterlife, but the more you can kind of experience and come to know those things, the richer the poem becomes. Even such a simple poem as this.

Joanne:

I feel so jealous of William Carlos Williams just from a poetry point of view. The fact that he was able to create something that is so memorable and so memorizable, that is _every_ poetÕs dream.

Abram:

So should I read this poem again?

Joanne:

I would love that.

Abram:

ÒThis is Just to SayÓ by William Carlos Williams: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56159/this-is-just-to-say]

Joanne:

[laughing] ÒSo cold!Ó [laughing] If they were so cold, why do I feel so _burned_? [laughs]

Abram:

[laughing]

Joanne:

Burn, William Carlos, burn!

Abram:

[laughs]

[outro music starts]

Joanne:

Oh thank you for reading that again! For more information about William Carlos Williams, please visit our website at poetryforall.fireside.fm.

Abram:

You can subscribe to _Poetry For All_ wherever you get your podcasts and please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Joanne:

And thank you for listening.

Abram:

Thank you.

[outro music continues to end]