Friday, January 21, 2011

A Seemingly Simple Sestina





First!
It's the first blog post for my English 215 class (20-21st century literature), and it's a bit late, but the topic is the poem, "This Is Just To Say," by William Carlos Williams.

I've actually read this poem before, in a high school English class, and I am still intrigued at how famous this poem has become. When you look at it, you think, "Oh, it's just a little blurb someone wrote, and -what the heck- they didn't even bother with punctuation!"

Although it was such short a poem, there were a surprising number of views taken to it (and so many questions to be asked when you actually analyzed it). Maybe it was a revenge poem, like a husband-and-wife-passive-aggressive-family-feud thing? Maybe it was a note that a little kid left on the fridge to his mother because he was so hungry and a plum that she was probably saving for breakfast was all that was left at the time? Did the author actually feel remorse and was seeking forgiveness, even though the entire poem is about how delicious the plums were, save ONE line?

This one would be a fun paper topic to write about.

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