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Summary and Critical Analysis
This is Just to Say by
William Carlos Williams is a unique modern poem which shows that poetry can be
about anything and everything. Moreover, it shows how really poetic simple and
ordinary experiences can be. The poem takes as its subject a very ordinary event
of daily and family life: the speaker confesses to his mother, or may be his
wife, that he couldn't help eating plums kept in the kitchen.
He means to confess the guilt
and apologize for it. The poem can also be interpreted symbolically. Its
simplicity, economy and its unique form must also be commented upon. Its
imagery is also another striking feature. The whole poem is written in just twenty-eight
words and in two sentences without punctuation; the capital letter in the
beginning last stanza indicates a sentence break. The title can also be taken
as the first line. So the whole poem can be summarized as: This is just to say
that I’ve eaten the plums and I want to apologize, but I couldn’t help eating
them because they were so cold and delicious.
Because of the extreme
economy and care in wording, the reader is encouraged to give equal care and
thought to each word. The line ends mark usual pause and unusual reflection
(meditation). The tone is of a hesitant child confessing his mistake. The
paradox in the justification is very typically childlike and interesting: the
speaker says that he ate plums “because” they were cool and delicious. How did
he know that? The lie and the honesty are so striking. He ate them first and
then only found them delicious: he was overcome by temptation. He realizes the
mistake only when he had done it. That is inevitable.
The paradox in the confession
has deeper meanings. We know what right, good, moral is or truth only when we
try and face the wrong, evil, immoral or false. We say we won’t do worse, and
we confess when we have done it. We can’t undo anything. This is an inescapable
reality of the human condition. All knowledge is gained or advance on this
principle of paradox. The event in the poem can be compared with Adam and Eve’s
case. They ate the apple and realized things like shame, disease, anger, guile,
death, and so on. The experience of the evil only confirmed their knowledge of
the good (or the right) and the value of the bliss that God had given them.
They realized the value of “Eden” only when they had lost it. We realize the
value of ignorance, any possession, happiness, and anything that we have only after
we lose it. The knowledge of the dark, guilt and shame gives value or meaning
to the bright side of life. Opposites define and validate opposites.
At the symbolic level,
therefore, the child represents human beings who are like Adam in the mistakes
they go on making and the knowledge they go on achieving. So the addressee
(you) of the poem must be Christ or God. The familiarity of the subject matter
and imagery tells us that we repeat mistakes of the same kind even in ordinary
life and conditions.
The imaginary is very
concrete, vivid and sensuous. The ‘cold’ plums in the ‘icebox’ and their
‘delicious’ sweetness brings water in our mouths! The fidelity of thought is
also striking: they were probably saved for breakfast. This is an irrelevant
idea to cover up the wrong, and to be “intelligent”. But it doesn’t help
anyway.
The poem is at first starting
in its economy: Even the title has to be a part of it. “This” may mean a ‘note’
left on the table, or it may also confess his guilt for everyone through ‘this’
poem. Besides the economy, the familiar setting and the dramatic situation
clarified by a few words is also notable. The poem is amazingly simple in
diction. Only the thought-provoking truth makes it short of being a child’s
poem.This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams
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