18 pages • 36 minutes read

This Is Just to Say

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1934

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Plums

If only the contrite husband, before heading out the door, had scarfed an apple, with its Old Testament symbolism suggesting the grand drama of the deep-seated itch of temptation, and the sad and inevitable urge to gratification that defines humanity’s postlapsarian state; or maybe grapes, which writers of Antiquity equated with bacchanalian indulgence; or, if you read Aesop, the symbol of humanity’s immemorial greed for things just out of reach. But plums?

The plums of course never actually appear in the poem. When the poem begins, the plums are already a memory, cased in the cold past tense “were” (Line 3). Certainly, the sweet and delicious fruit in the icebox has been freighted with extravagant readings by earnest readers of the poem—the plums are symbols of deep temptation, the brutal logic of selfishness, the gratification of the appetites at the expense of others—but these elaborate readings reveal more about the individual readers than about Williams’s fragile, spare poem. The plums then symbolize the invitation to do such elaborate reaching-into a poem but only, the poem cautions, with delicacy, respecting the premise of the text itself. Have at it, the poet encourages, but then when it comes time to set aside the poem, look into your own icebox, and find there strewn about carelessly, haphazardly objects—low fat milk, eggs, bottled water, cottage cheese—that can be similarly illuminated into suggestion, everyday objects never elevated into poetic lines, but nevertheless there for your delectation.

The Note

The speaker leaves a written note. A note left, even hurriedly, is a symbol of reaching out, a symbol of the species’ genetic-deep need to communicate, to share. Given the domestic setting and given the petty nature of the thievery, the note is hardly a confession—most likely the list of suspects for the purloined fruit would be short. The note is less a confession, less a courtesy, less some mean-spirited taunt as it is a gesture of reaching out, the human need to use the vehicle of language to share something that, in writing, assumes dimensions of permanence and importance not accorded to spoken words. It matters, then, that this is not a conversation recorded: it is written. The title of the poem then works ironically, the just underscoring the magnitude of the gesture. There is nothing just in the deployment of words. Something in the speaker demanded something grander, something more there than speech. After all, presumably, the speaker could have done just that, yelled up happily, even snarkily, to the recipient of the note that her precious plums are history. Because the poem does not actually reference who receives the note, the note then is left for the reader, a signal revelation of the sensuous experience of something ordinary, something immediate, something right there in the icebox. Like the recipient of the note, the reader is denied the actual plums but is gifted with the logic of indulgence, the satisfactions of the ordinary, and the sweet reward of, every now and then, giving in to a modest temptation.

Breakfast

Perhaps the most symbolically heavy presence in the slender poem is its greatest absence, the wife’s breakfast. The poem does not linger in the kitchen to record the reaction of the recipient (most likely a knowing kind of head-nodding acceptance) or to chronicle what, in turn, will serve as breakfast. Only what does not. According to the logic of the apology, the plums in the icebox were probably going to be breakfast for whomever reads the note. Breakfast then becomes the inevitable other side of delight and indulgence. Breakfast, which will be done without the sweet and chilled plums, symbolizes missed opportunities, denied chances, pleasures that are for whatever reason deferred. Plans are logical, calculated, smart. And for that, plans then emerge as the poem’s killjoy, the poet’s antagonist. Planning necessarily obviates the buzz of embracing the moment. To chill the fruit for consumption in the morning delays pleasure, takes inventory of the moment and decides to post pleasure to some future-me.

The poem, however, argues, live for the moment, celebrate impulse, and follow the wonderfully illogical urgencies of the appetites—within reason, of course (the speaker is not snorting a bag of uncut cocaine or downing a bottle of 90 proof Absolut). In short, much like an Aesop fable, the poet teaches through otherwise neutral objects. Don’t think, feel. The lesson, as it were, is zen-like in its cryptic simplicity: don’t store your plums for a breakfast tomorrow. You will end up exactly where the recipient will undoubtedly be when they head to the ice box: the dreary reality of breakfast without plums; that is, life bereft of the stunning and unexpected grace of a moment’s impulsive, sensuous delight.