This Is Just To Say: Maybe The Worst Apology Ever

The poem “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams is the epitome of the kind of style you can expect from him. Many of his poems are rather brief, more on the abstract side, and in experience they usually contain some piece of technology. 

“This Is Just to Say” is another one of my favorite poems for a few reasons. The brevity of the piece interests me very much. There are twelve lines which is a short poem on its own, but the longest of these twelve lines is three words in length. There is no punctuation in this poem so all of the lines are enjambed meaning that each line reads into the next without any interruption. These elements of the poem lead to a very quick reading experience. It’s almost as if the poem is over as soon as it begins. It sort of functions as a snapshot of a very small moment in time that we are being allowed into just for a short while. When all of these aspects are brought together the poem feels very familiar to me. It feels very modern, very real, very much like Williams could be talking about eating my plums from the ice box.

Speaking of the ice box… I’m very curious as to why Williams chooses to say “ice box” specifically. When this poem was published in 1934 the electric refrigerator was already a mainstream commercial success thanks to General Electric for a number of years. Outside of his poetry he worked as a physician so he certainly would have had the money to purchase an electric fridge. At the very least, if he didn’t have one of his own, he would have had some knowledge of the electric refrigerator so that means when he uses “ice box” in this poem it is an active choice. To my early point, Williams often involves technology in his poems and I think that is because he lived on the cusp of significant technological advancement. He would have lived through early versions of technology, like the ice box for example, and he would have seen these things evolve into their modern forms. Maybe his inclusion of dated technology in this poem serves as a connection to the past and maybe it was a little window of nostalgia for Williams to have the plums in an ice box instead of a refrigerator. 

The last part of this poem that I will discuss is one of the top reasons why I love it so much. It is literally a terrible apology note. It’s not like the narrator is actually saying sorry. They state what they have done and admit they know whomever they are addressing was probably saving the plums but the narrator doesn’t seem to be sorry. The way the last stanza is written, “Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold,” makes it seem like there was no other choice. It’s almost a declaration of “You can’t hold me accountable for this because how could I not eat the plums? They were the perfect plums and they were right there in the ice box.” This conclusion is hilarious because I can imagine this being a note that is pinned to the ice box and then the owner of the plums comes for their plums only to find this note and no fruit at all.