Forgive me

As you’re aware, poetry is an art form that comprises many, many forms—we’ve got novel-length epics and two-line zingers, haiku, sijo and englynion on the short end; tight rhyming and meter restrictions and wild-ass free verse. The subject matter covers mythic heroes, passionate love, the sorrow and bitterness of war—and the littlest quotidian details.

They’re all poems.

For today’s National Poetry Month example, let’s have something from William Carlos Williams, whose day job was as a medical doctor, and who hung about with the likes of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. 

Williams focused on the small things of daily life and sought to build up a thoroughly American take on poetry, in the face of others he thought were too Euro-centric. He influenced later poets like Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, as well as Denise Levertov. Our poem today distils one of life’s small tragedies mixed in with one of its joys.

“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