Since its publication in 1934, William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” has become one of the most recognized and most parodied poems in the 20th-century American literary canon. A literal apology note tacked to a refrigerator, the poem is at once inviting and uncomplicated in its presentation (28 words, really a single sentence sculpted into three stanzas) and yet intricate and intriguing in its implications, not so much about what it says (the speaker is apologizing presumably to his wife for eating some luscious plums he found in the refrigerator) as about what it suggests: it’s a profound meditation on the complicated dynamic of temptation and regret as well as an observation on the simple, uncomplicated joy of everyday things.

Published in Williams’s 1934 omnibus collection from New Directions, the poem celebrates the delight in happening upon sweet plums stored in the refrigerator, apparently saved for someone else’s breakfast the next morning, and luxuriating in the sensual (and guilty) pleasure of eating the fruit all by himself. The poem, despite (or perhaps because of) its zen-like simplicity, has become a staple in anthologies and has sparked intense debate over the meaning, to the point that detractors of the poem point out the elaborate exegeses inspired by such an evidently simple poem—the poem is a roundabout confession of adultery, it is evidence of a snarky husband’s ongoing emotional terrorism over his helpless wife, it is a minimalist retelling of the temptation narrative of Adam and Eve, it is an oblique confession of nontraditional sexual orientation—reveal the deep flaw in overthinking literature into meaning rather than relaxing into its invitation to enjoy the simple and unexpected gifts the everyday world offers.

Poet Biography

William Carlos Williams was born 17 September 1883 in Rutherford, in the northeast corner of New Jersey, about 20 minutes from Manhattan. The son of first-generation immigrants (his father was from England, his mother from Puerto Rico), Williams grew up enamored by American culture, American life and its history, and the expansive and open horizons of American landscapes—indeed his first published work, completed when he was a teenager, was a one-act drama about the Salem witch trials. Always a voracious reader, Williams nevertheless committed his education to the sciences, completing a medical degree at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There he met Ezra Pound, then a struggling poet and student of languages who introduced Williams to the opportunities to reinvent literature offered by the movement, self-styled as Modernism, which was then sweeping Europe. After a brief time in Europe, where he moved happily in the circle of expatriates, Williams returned to Rutherford and began what would be a near 40-year career as a physician, specializing in pediatric care. In his off time, he began experimenting with his perception of poetry informed as much by the revolutionary manifestoes of Modernism that called for radical, avant-garde expression in the arts as by his own fascination with free verse (although Williams preferred the term variable foot, referring to the number of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry). Williams was engrossed by the subtle music and complex rhythms he heard in the poetry of fellow New Jerseyite Walt Whitman, a towering figure in the liberation of American literature from European models.

Maintaining his anchorage in the day-to-day busyness of being a pediatrician, Williams sought in his poetry, published in limited circulation magazines and chapbooks to a small, if enthusiastic readership, to celebrate distinctly American subjects in a verse line that reflected the language patterns and subtle music of conversational American English. His poetry defied the use of the metrical freedoms of Modernism that had moved poetry into what he saw as increasingly esoteric experiments that alienated rather than welcomed readers. His poetry, influenced by the guerilla movement known as Imagism, led in part by Pound himself, rejected the notion that poetry tangle with complex ideas and philosophical abstracts (Williams was particularly put-off by the widespread critical praise that greeted T. S. Eliot’s ambitious and dense The Waste Land). Rather, poetry should embrace the world about the poet and share that enthusiasm and that near-spiritual sense of its vitality in poems that stripped lines down to critical simplicity and used subtle sonic dynamics to create a compelling auditory effect.

Few of his patients even knew Williams was a published poet. Although Williams enjoyed a long career as a poet, his work would wait to find an appreciative audience until the 1950s and the Beat movement, with its own celebration of the music of open verse and its sense of the spiritual energy in simplicity informed by Eastern rather than Western thought. That generation found a profound influence in Williams’s gentle and unapologetic joy in the delights of the world and in his meticulous crafting, and recrafting, of each line of verse. His work was recognized with the Pulitzer Prize just months before his death, 4 March 1963.

Poem Text

William, William Carlos. “Just to Say.” 1934. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The opening stanza, and the term is loosely applied to the configuration of 10 words, begins with a confession:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox (Lines 1-4).

Although Williams delighted years later in providing the basic situation, his wife was looking forward to the fruit for breakfast (indeed, after the poem had found its audience, Williams’s wife wrote her own hilarious response, in poetry, to the theft of her fruit), the poem maintains a slender presence. No narrative context is provided. No setting. No characters. No indication is given to whom the confession is being made, perhaps a spouse, perhaps a family member, perhaps a roommate, perhaps to some interior conscience.

The poem begins with a delightfully small-scale tragedy, a happily minor theft: fruit being stored in the refrigerator (or ice box, as the appliances were termed in the 1930s), hardly worth the investment of poetry. The title reveals the trivial nature of the pilfer, this is just to say, upcycling into a poem an afterthought, more a hasty (if sincere) explanation than some soul-lacerating confession. Really the premise is familiar to any family, any roommates, even a workplace, anyplace with a common refrigerator. Most likely discovered during a hasty refrigerator reconnaissance during a routine departure for work, there they were, those ripe plums, and, boy, did they look good. This offense is hardly premeditated, coolly calculated. The speaker momentarily is persuaded by the chance sight of the fruit in the ice box. Eating the plums, however, has raised some level of conscience in the speaker and thus apparently requires giving some notice of the theft, creating the opening stanza’s sense of both moral urgency and playful guilt.

The second stanza darkens the playful mood just a bit when the speaker confesses that the plums were probably being saved for breakfast. Maybe, he reasons, he was selfish. The mood, however, does not get too dark, as the stanza hinges on the word “probably” (Line 6). You were “probably” saving them for breakfast. And given that plums are fruits that really do not require refrigeration, that the fruit was being chilled would indicate his wife was probably preparing a specially tailored breakfast repast. Probably. The word “probably” reveals both the speaker’s sincerity in giving in to temptation and his playful teasing over the moral implications of it. After all, what he “stole,” and the term, given its being applied to fruit in an icebox, is more ironic than tragic, can easily be replenished by a quick trip to a store. The early morning raid on the ice box hardly rises to the level of criminal behavior. Yes, certainly, he admits in Stanza 2, your breakfast will be diminished. On a scale of things, however, that offense is at best amusing, and at worst annoying.

Stanza 3 offers the speaker’s sincere apologies, the sincerity offset more than a bit by his acknowledgment of how sweet and delicious the plums were. The reminder of the sweet taste of the chilled fruit might come across as taunting, even mean spirited, but, again, given the subject matter (plums), the taunting reads more playful than menacing. The poem closes as the speaker reflects on the taste of the purloined fruit, really addressed more to himself (it is a note, after all) than to the person to whom he is leaving the note. The repetition of the “so” enhances the persistence of the sweet memory and shifts the burden of the poem away from a confession to the pleasure of giving into temptation and the delight in the simple, if compelling pleasure of the fruit he happened to find right there in the icebox. Gratifying that momentary urge in the end justifies itself.