William_Carlos_Williams__This_Is_Just_To_Say

William Carlos Williams: This Is Just To Say Is It Any Good' William Carlos Williams published “Spring and All: A Collection of Poems and Essays” in 1923, which includes the poem “This Is Just To Say”. The inspiration for this poem came from Marcel Duchamps’ “ready mades,” or the concept that one takes something out of everyday life and turns it into art. Thus making the statement that art is not necessary something of content but of framing. In “This Is Just To Say,” Williams turns a note he (or someone else perhaps) wrote into a piece of art. By giving it a title and including it with the rest of his work, it becomes a poem. In the poem, Williams describes a scene in which someone is apologizing for stealing a plum. Cast in the form of a note left on the refrigerator, the poem sounds “found.”As with the found poem, the lack of a meditating voice leaves the reader with a wide range of potential meanings. Oddly (some may think), although this much-anthologized poem is firmly in the canon of the twentieth-century poetry, there is no general poem, good, poetry, life, just, true, poems, art, should, say, one, williams, reader, out, horace, giving, charming, charm, topic, succinct, something, single, several, rather, piece, must, firmly, even, criteria, conclusion, beauty, audience, apologizing, accurate, about