William Carlos William's poem, "This Is Just to Say," has generated quite a lot of intertextual responses on YouTube. Check out the more professional dramatized reading by the British actor Matthew Macfadyen and the animation children's project from Uncommon Films. The latter even features a recording of Williams reading his own poem.

I chose the video made by Nicole LaJeunesse for its interpretation of the poem's form -- it may actually be a note stuck to the refrigerator door by a magnet. What if we didn't know it was a poem written by Williams? Would we even think the words written in 12 lines make a poem? Perhaps not. We imagine that the one who wrote it was in a rush and didn't particularly care for punctuation. And if the note was for us, we definitely would not think it a poem!

But here we are trying to interpret what may be just a note. We imagine somebody writing to someone. And if we go by LaJeunesse's and Macfadyen's interpretations, that somebody could be a husband writing a note to his wife. That husband is perhaps feeling guilty and tries to make it up to her by writing an apology. And because it is written down and not something we overhear, we begin to really look at the words on the page. We begin to see that it may actually be a poem, after all. We may even learn that there's a tradition of this sort dating back to Ovid's romantic epistles as well as among ancient Chinese poets (for example, Ezra Pound's translation of Li Po's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter").

So what is the persona (the "I" speaking in the text) trying to say in this note, er, poem? Well, we assume the persona is really saying "sorry" for having eaten the plums. We also assume that the persona knew that the other person (the "you" mentioned in the second stanza) was saving the plums for breakfast, and had placed it in the fridge to keep it fresh and deliciously cold.

But how does the persona say "sorry"?

The note begins with an admission "This is just to say // I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox" (the title serves as the first line; also, that last word dates the poem). That admission is soon followed by the tone of guilt in the second stanza, especially because the persona knew the "you were probably / saving" the fruit for breakfast. The use of "probably" rather than the more direct "you were / saving" allows us to imagine the scene this way: the persona finds the plums in the icebox, is tempted, eats them, and only as an afterthought realizes the mistake. And so the third stanza (made up of four lines like the previous stanzas) begins with an entreaty for forgiveness, followed by a rationalization for the act committed.

But the last three lines of the poem don't seem much of a justification, with the persona trying to lay the blame on the plums being so tempting -- indeed, "they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold." And yet, those three lines somehow imply the persona will really be forgiven. Perhaps because the lines don't really refer just to the plums but also to the shared intimacy between the "I" and "you." I can imagine the "you" reading the note with a half-smile, vicariously enjoying the pleasure of eating the plums as described by the persona.

It's funny how we devoted several paragraphs trying to explain the 12 lines of this poem. But then, that's how poetry really is like -- it condenses into so few lines an emotion or an idea through the use of suggestion or implication. We can choose, of course, to just look at the literal situation offered us -- someone writing a note -- or we can delve into what may be hidden between or beneath the lines, or as someone puts it, "what is not said by saying."

Next installment: Lyric poetry