♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Major support for "Poetry in America" provided by the Dalio Foundation.

Additional support provided by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of "Poetry" magazine, and an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.

And by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

And from Deborah Hayes Stone and Max Stone.

♪ ♪ JOHN HODGMAN: This is just to say 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.

ZACHARY DAVIS: It's fragments, a few lines, but it shows how we can give meaning to very ephemeral kinds of things.

Who would have expected such a simple poem to be one of the most famous in American poetry?

When I went on that Wikipedia page to do my five minutes of research, there was a photo of the poem inscribed in marble on a wall in English in The Hague, the Netherlands.

And I was, like... why?

We have centuries of Netherlandic poetry we could put up there, but let's get this one about the cold, sweet plums.

And it really speaks to the universality of this poem.

NEW: Only 28 words, without a rhyme or image or obvious symbol, William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say" is one of those poems that makes us ask: What is a poem?

What about this simple statement bears re-reading?

What's so catchy?

What's so memorable about what is posing as basically a note left on a refrigerator?

NEW: To gather answers, I asked five couples to dig into this apparently simple poem with me.

- The first time I read this poem... NEW: Chip and Layla... - I was thinking that the speaker was just pretty selfish.

NEW: Zach and Mariya.

- It's not clear that she's saving the plums for herself.

- We've been married 57 years.

NEW: Ed and Nancy.

- There's not very much about each other that we don't know.

NEW: Sarah and Brianna.

- I would save the plums.

- Yeah, you would save the plums.

- Definitely.

NEW: James and Luisella.

- Though James is very good at raiding the fridge.

He doesn't say that, it's... (chuckles) NEW: And I asked four others, as well.

- The other thing which is really... NEW: Jane Hirshfield is a poet.

It is, at least on the surface, an apology.

I have asked all of my friends if they could think of any other apologies in American poetry or world poetry, and no one could come up with anything other than the only one... NEW: Elizabeth Reis is an historian of gender and sexuality.

To me, this is not an apology.

It's just, he doesn't want her to be mad at him.

My scenario... - This is a love poem, but it's a complicated love poem.

NEW: Rafael Campo is a poet who, like William Carlos Williams, is also a practicing physician.

And John Hodgman-- writer, comedian, and "New York Times" columnist.

And also he was a physician.

Drives me crazy, 'cause, you know, I write things sometimes, but I don't have time to be a pediatrician.

Like, stay in your lane.

I don't have time to be a doctor, you shouldn't have time to write so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ BRIANNA: This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox.

HODGMAN: There is this sort of almost legal disclaimer that opens this poem by saying, "This, this is just to say."

♪ ♪ CAMPO: I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox.

- Are we sharing, are we stealing?

I always find it... it's just such a wonderful poem, because it does feel like this kind of mischievous, sort of, you know, sly... You know, like something, a note left on the kitchen table.

HIRSHFIELD: And something in your mind is going, "Why do I care?"

I'm glad you mentioned that, because why do I care?

He delays why we might care for a while.

He just goes on and tells us a little more about them, "that were in the icebox."

ED: I listen to the fact that it's called an icebox, which says to me, so we really are dating this from an event point of view.

NANCY: Yes, we are.

- And Nancy knows about iceboxes.

She had iceboxes.

- Yeah, we did.

- Right, but... INTERVIEWER: And so, what's an icebox?

NANCY: An icebox is a metal thing with a space in the back for ice to go in, and you had to make sure you always had ice in that space, or the stuff inside wouldn't be cold.

We don't have iceboxes anymore.

That's very old-timey.

And by the way, who's eating plums for breakfast?

♪ ♪ NEW: Williams published this poem in 1934, in one of the worst years of the Great Depression.

Though he was by this time a well-established American poet, Williams depended on his medical practice to pay the bills.

Making house calls around the poorer New Jersey towns, delivering babies, treating colds and flus, Williams couldn't afford to say no when a patient called.

CAMPO: And when you think, you know, he wrote this during the Great Depression.

NEW: Depression, yeah.

- And so, you know, this sense of plenty in the face of deprivation.

♪ ♪ ZACH: When this was written, some small luxury goods, like cold plums, may have been something you really waited for that made an otherwise difficult life that much better.

REIS: Was he eating a delicacy that she saved up for in addition to saving them for breakfast?

Because in the 1930s, the woman would be in charge of the domestic sphere, and he would be out working.

As we know, he was a physician.

So he was doing his work, and he'd come home, and maybe he wasn't sure what he can't eat in the fridge.

He's making a commentary about their marriage and about his ineptitude in the kitchen, perhaps.

Or what good care she takes of him.

- Or what good care she takes of him, right.

♪ ♪ NEW: Williams' wife, Flossie, was a hometown girl whom he married shortly after courting, proposing to, and being rejected by her sister.

As a young doctor, Williams indulged in, and admitted to Flossie, more than one casual affair.

This poem gives us insight into all the complexities of this relationship and also into the complexities of that domestic life that Williams chose.

I mean, lots of other poets were off gallivanting around Europe, and he chooses this bourgeois life of routine in which he would find the poetry in domestic experience.

- Yes, yes, absolutely.

And the, the at once, the sort of the plainness of domesticity and the, you know, the kind of, the familiarity of it, but also these little infinite insights that, that open up whole worlds.

♪ ♪ HIRSHFIELD: One way that we know that he is putting a lot of thought into every word that he is saying here is when you see it on the page, and you see how short the lines are.

Short lines in poetry cause you to summon an extra attention, the way that when you enter a Chinese temple, there is a raised threshold.

And if you were walking in mindlessly, you would trip and fall down.

So by being forced to pick up your feet, you are being forced into an awareness that this is a changed condition of awareness.

It's a changed condition of being a person.

- Yes, it is a form, and it is a formed environment.

It is a poem.

It's not a refrigerator note.

I took it to be a poem because I took the three stanzas to be the plums.

I understand there to be three plums, and each stanza is one rounded plum.

He strips it of virtually anything but the simplicity of a plum.

♪ ♪ CAMPO: This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast.

There is within those words immediate context of history.

You can almost imagine, like, "Last time I ate this food "you were saving, I didn't say anything about it and I caught hell for it."

The "probably," I think, is, is a way of trying to find an excuse for oneself.

You know they were saving it for breakfast.

But you say "probably" to excuse yourself a little bit.

MARIYA: I think it's a poem about sharing a life.

And through "probably," I feel like he's also showing that it's an intimate relationship.

We, we know what we like to eat for breakfast.

He knows what I like to eat for breakfast.

The idea of one spouse leaving another spouse a note, to find when presumably she wakes up-- I liked that.

- Sort of romantic.

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast.

The useful thing that I picked up on in that reading is the way that you have a good sense of my saving.

(laughs) The awareness might result in annoyance on your part at times.

- Yeah.

There could be a sense of trying to exculpate oneself by saying, "I don't know, you...

Probably you were saving them, "but there's no way for me to know, so I just went ahead and ate them."

Could he be saying, "And which you were probably saving..." - (derisively): "Oh, like, you were probably saving these for breakfast," like that?

- Yeah.

Is there the possibility of a kind of irritation at the domestic regularity?

From that reading, that he's a little bit annoyed at her, and, "You were probably saving these for breakfast, "but now I've eaten them.

Forgive me."

(both laughing) ♪ ♪ NEW: The fact that we can read that "probably" in so many different ways is owing to the poem's form.

More than simply depicting fruit, Williams-- like the Modernist artists who were his friends-- was interested in shaping, arranging, and composing objects in relation to each other.

Williams was especially influenced by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, and he used the weight of fat white spaces and the asymmetry of short next to long lines to show how meanings can shift and teeter like objects suspended from a mobile in a mild breeze.

Each line has one metrical stress, but just where that stress falls can vary according to a reader's interpretation.

And these variations in emphasis influence other emphases, with noticeable effects on tone and meaning.

(gently): This is just to say... (declaratively): This is just to say... (matter-of-factly): This is just to say... (matter-of-factly): ...and which you were probably saving for breakfast... (apologetically): ...and which you were probably saving for breakfast... (knowingly): ...and which you were probably saving for breakfast... NEW: So how you read "probably" affects how you'll read "forgive me."

(apologetically): Forgive me (forcefully): Forgive me.

(groans): Forgive me.

This is just to say I've eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast.

Forgive me.

(James laughing) They were delicious, so sweet and so cold.

(laughing) NEW: What may read at first as an ordinary, even artless act of marital communication has in fact been carefully formed to include the full range of marital possibilities.

When I first read it, I didn't really think it was about plums.

I was, like, oh, there's probably just some underlying tension here, because the plums are such a, like, frivolous...

It's just a plum.

It is impossible not to read this and not think of a sexual undertone.

♪ ♪ NEW: One might also wonder whether the appetite for the plums doesn't substitute for another appetite.

The plum equals the essential erotic connection that he makes with the physical world and that he is reminding his, his wife of.

For me, tactfulness requires that one feel these things, but not necessarily name them.

The plums hold all of human sexuality.

When you say appetite, all appetites come into the room.

I think, I think that is a note that's sounded in the poem, that, you know, kind of loosen up a little, you know?

Like, stop... Yeah, not keeping everything in the icebox.

Yeah, let's enjoy the, the moment.

♪ ♪ HODGMAN: Coldness has a very specific metaphoric history with regards to sexual intimacy.

Which is a very potent tension in a lot of couples, between spontaneity and lack thereof, planning versus impetuousness, hoarding versus spending.

Would it be the same if you said, "I've eaten the plums that were on the counter"?

There's something, there is something chilling about "icebox."

♪ ♪ HIRSHFIELD: I assume he's talking to his wife, but I don't assume that he's calling her an icebox.

I don't assume that they had opposite lives in which she was always saving things for later and he was always taking them.

All right, so maybe it's really a commentary on when they were first married, the romance and, you know, sexuality that they shared together.

"This delicious forbidden fruit that you've put in cold storage "and hidden away from me for many years, I grabbed it while you were sleeping"?

Yeah, there's a lot of innuendo there, I guess.

Do you hear that in the poem?

I don't know if I hear it between them that's lost, but I feel like I hear it between him and possibly somebody else that's being cultivated.

We assume that she's in bed.

- Yeah.

- It's kind of interesting; there's no bed in the poem.

No.

But we know the breakfast is the next thing, right?

"I've eaten the plums which you were saving for breakfast."

He doesn't say "which you were saving for a party next week."

I think it's like... We're meant to think that that's the next thing in the cycle of the day, so we assume that she's in bed.

And isn't it interesting that a poet could summon up nighttime, sex, all of that, just by using the word "breakfast"?

♪ ♪ HODGMAN (quickly): This is just to say I've eaten the plums that were in the icebox you were probably saving for breakfast.

NEW: Well, he was a little bit unfaithful to Flossie, actually.

- Yes, he was.

He was... And she was, I think, really the, kind of the guardian of the home.

And really, you know, in terms of his literary reputation, you know, he, I think in many ways, relied on her, depended on her to do this, to save the plums.

♪ ♪ And then we reach him saying... Forgive me.

- Forgive me.

(groaning): Forgive me!

(laughs): Forgive me!

You know, "forgive me," it's sort of a command.

He doesn't say, "I'm sorry."

He says, "Forgive me."

And that's also, I think, a way of conveying this sense of, you know, this, this is a safe relationship.

You know, "You have to forgive me," you know?

"You know me."

You know, it's not, like, "I'm sorry!"

It's not really penitent.

It's a celebration of... - "You know me, I'm irrepressible.

It's irrepressible me."

- Right.

REIS: When I read this poem, it makes me wonder, what was their relationship like?

Because to me, the title is the part that says, "I'm not really sorry."

Like, "This Is Just to Say"... Really?

Why isn't the title "I'm Sorry"?

This is a moment of impulse, a kind of selfishness.

It's hard to talk about gluttony if the guy's just eating two plums, you know what I mean?

But he didn't save one.

If there were only two, he could have saved one for her.

Two plums, two people.

There may have been a draft of this poem between the two plums.

While he was writing it, "This is just to say, I saved you a plum.

Sorry I had to eat one of them."

It's, like, "You know what?

I want that other one, too."

And then he threw that poem away and had to write this one.

If you did something wrong, if you took somebody's stuff, you don't stick in the dagger to let them know just exactly how much they missed out on.

You really try to downplay what it was, like, "Oh, yeah, I went to that restaurant you wanted to go to.

"Wasn't that good.

Don't worry, you didn't miss anything."

That's what you do if you love somebody.

(sincerely): Forgive me.

They were delicious.

So sweet and so cold.

- Jerk.

(exhales sharply, laughs) It's like he's mocking that I didn't get to enjoy the sweetness of the plums.

- Mmm, mmm.

Now, behind marital disputes about eating fruit, actually, when you think about it, the entire Judeo-Christian tradition and all our woes begin from a moment in which a marital couple have a dispute about eating fruit.

♪ ♪ So this has a big, big echo behind it.

But the echo is much reduced.

This is really just to say, it's a little moment in a marital understanding.

Is he gloating?

"Man, those were such good plums.

You snooze, you lose."

Or is there a sharing?

I believe what he is doing is giving in return for the perishable plums-- which are gone, which are eaten-- he is giving the plums of this page, and they are lasting, imperishable pleasure.

This is a small crime.

And yet I feel the need to commemorate it and let you know that I did it and let you know why.

- And to share it with you.

- And to share it with you.

And to include you in it.

- Yeah.

- And to seduce you with it a little bit and to turn crime into... Yeah, and to reach across time between these... the addresser and the addressee, who aren't there together at this moment.

And I wonder, is he sharing with her at all by sharing the language?

- Yes, I think in some ways, he is.

"Forgive me, you provide me food and I give you sweet talk."

"And I give you love," exactly, right.

I always imagined this, rightly or wrongly, as a couple that had been together for some time.

This was a relationship at a mature phase where they don't see each other all the time.

It is not a relationship of infatuation, where one party is giving the other one plums with great ceremony.

The sensuousness isn't here a kind of, like, libido.

It is more like, "I'm still alive.

I still have fruits to eat."

♪ ♪ They were delicious.

- They were delicious.

They were delicious.

So sweet and so cold.

These words cause me to swoon.

♪ ♪ NEW: Although these lines may be read in the context of relationships, the three adjectives also give expression to the entirely individual experience of taste-- an experience only heightened by that repeated word "so."

As a reader, you are suddenly inside the experience of eating plums.

The plums have gone from these alluded-to "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox" to something that we are almost sinking our own teeth into.

Suddenly I am plunged into plums by syllables on a page, and that plums will never be the same for me again.

♪ ♪ REIS: They were delicious, so sweet, so cold.

You can just imagine him dripping in plum juice.

This is about the moment, and these...

These plums are too good.

Yeah, those plums sounded fantastic.

(New laughing) And I don't like fruit.

By the time he's finished, the poem has really given the reason why there was no resisting these plums.

♪ ♪ NEW: What would be the difference if the poem were reordered so that it went, "Forgive me, they were delicious, so cold and so sweet."

Just from a writerly point of view, if William Carlos Williams had, "They were so cold and so sweet," and said, "What do you think about this?

", I'd be, like, "Bill C. Bill, no, you can't end on sweet.

"It's cliché.

Cold-- specific."

Specificity is the soul of narrative.

That describes a moment in time.

I sometimes think about Williams as the poet of stolen moments.

He had an unusual writing practice.

He would write between-- is it true?-- he would write between appointments?

- Yes, yes, absolutely.

He would write, you know, sort of jot down these almost like found poems, these short texts, and really between seeing patients.

He did that at his office and he often wrote on prescription pads.

- Yes.

- Which is amazing that he... You know, talk about a delimited space.

About moments that we don't even see, that are not only not the conventional subject for poetry, but occur in odd little corners.

And what's so amazing, too, about that, ironically, is that often these are the most profound moments.

They are at the same time central to our experience of, of living.

♪ ♪ HIRSHFIELD: He takes the ordinary and brings it up into visibility as something which is not unordinary, but which we see with changed eyes and changed ears.

It allows us to see the ordinary in its fullness.

He says, you know, "This is just to say," as if it's, you know, just this sort of dismissive, you know... And yet it frames this whole poem in such a wonderful way.

It really does, I think, you know, kind of elevate it.

So that kind of understatement of, this is just to say that you're about to experience a miracle.

♪ ♪ NEW: This is just to say 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Major support for "Poetry in America" provided by the Dalio Foundation.

Additional support provided by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of "Poetry" magazine, and an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.

And by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

And from Deborah Hayes Stone and Max Stone.

For additional information and streaming content, please visit us at poetryinamerica.org.