What is "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams about?

Question

In ["This is Just to Say"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Just_To_Say) by William Carlos Williams, the speaker appears to deliver an apology for stealing the plums of the person at whom the poem is targeted. I have heard some people analyze this poem as being truly about plums. However, I have seen others analyze this poem as being about murder or sexual assault. What is the poem truly about? Here is the text of the poem: >I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox >and which you were probably saving for breakfast >Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold.

Answer 1

It may not be about murder, but I wouldn't say it's "about plums" either. It's about what the speaker is doing.

Of course, there is never a correct answer to "what is this poem (or novel, or play, or song, or...) about?" But a good place to start is always with what's actually written; what do we actually know?

"This is just to say"

Ok, so it's a note

"I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox"

Talking about real, ordinary, everyday, human-scale stuff; we're not in the realm of kings, gods, or eternal human truths. Also, on a practical level, he's close enough to the person he's writing too that he has access to their icebox.

"And which you were probably saving for breakfast"

He understands what he did--he's not trying to claim innocence. Also, if it's breakfast, maybe they live together--a bit more intimacy hinted at there.

"Forgive me."

He's apologizing.

"They were delicious"

Or is he apologizing?

"So sweet and so cold"

Hmmm...kind of rubbing it in, isn't he? What does that do to the apology? How does that change our reading of the beginning of the note? How does that change our understanding of this relationship? Do these questions apply to our own relationships?

I'm all for deep close reading, especially of poetry, but one always runs the risk of overdoing it, maybe even projecting one's own concerns onto reading. That often seems to be doubly true for Williams's poetry. Yes, poets traffic in metaphor, but there's enough actually on the page, I think, to make it stand up on its own terms.

Murder? Sexual assault? Sure, you can make the argument. But my question would be: are you getting that *from* the poem, or are you reading it *into* the poem? Seems to me like you need a pretty dark imagination to read that into this.