Analysis Of William Carlos Williams This Is Just To Say

‘Sorry that I have eaten your delicious plums.’ This simple sentence of apology is seemingly what the poem, “This Is Just to Say”, is all about. The poem was written by William Carlos Williams, the well-known poet for his uncustomary and revolutionary experimental works, which was regarded almost heresy at the time. Even though it has been more than 80 years since this poem has published, in 1934, it still makes its readers confused and wondering if this one could be a poem. However, I suggest that the worth of this poem is in its challenge of proposing new styles and forms, which Williams thought suitable for the new nation, America, in its new age. His poems are about American’s everyday lives, especially focused on those of the local people

Many famous poems that were highly regarded at that time are full of pedantic or metaphysical expressions. Some of them are composed of classics, such as T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” or Ezra Pound’s “The Cantos,” which are convoluted to understand for uneducated people as well as many educated people. Nevertheless, Williams refused to follow the conventional ways of writing poetry and developed his own strategy of using the daily and ordinary materials around him for his poetry, in everyday languages. He committed himself to write in American style relying on Americanism, especially about local life, while other poets were obsessed with European style and conventional forms and contents. Actually, America, a sort of new nation at that time, could be similar to Europe yet not exactly same as. There must be difference between American and Europe. Thus, Williams might have think that to write authentic American poetry, he should have introduced new

It seems that he tried to expand the boundary of poetry by his experimental challenge in his poems against the conventional way of styles or forms. His idea is also applicable to this era. Since there are some senses that the conventional poetry we generally read are divorced from our everyday life, even if they are connecting to our reality, many of readers have difficulties to find meanings from the poetry and apply them to their real life. Therefore, clinging to conventional ways is not always the best strategy to live our lives, and this is even more so particularly in this period when everything changes so fast