Learning from Williams by Stephanie Brown

One of my favorite poems is Kenneth Koch's "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" which spoofs (mocks?) "This is Just to Say" by Williams, the famous poem about the juicy, ripe plums the speaker ate, which hinges on his phrase "Forgive me," and is likely directed to someone he lives with (a little too loving to be the kind of workplace refrigerator note one finds on Passive Aggressive Notes)--it finds beauty in a mundane domestic moment. Koch's variations are a funny four stanzas which grow more zany and preposterous, to wonderful comic effect. Here are Koch's stanzas one and four:    

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.

I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Koch’s poem is popular with many people and one can find numerous examples of folks following his example to write spoofs of Williams' poem and creating some clever and often hilarious variations. Koch’s own techniques for teaching kids to write poetry rely on this kind of imitation and improvisation and it’s delightful to find these done in the same spirit.

Williams’ plums, along with his red wheelbarrow and chickens, have become nearly kitschified in the culture, to the point where I wouldn’t find it surprising to see a lacquered kitchen plaque with the a watercolor of plums and the poem written next to it for sale at Bed, Bath and Beyond. (As I write this I am thinking that such a thing probably already exists, if not at BBB then on Etsy, and then I wonder why that would be such a bad thing after all…if we hang posters of Edward Hopper paintings in our homes or offices, are we not sustained by their vision, even if we could never possibly own an oil painting of one?) 

[As an aside, I find it daunting to write about poetry on the Best American Poetry blog, though I have read poetry my whole life, know quite a bit about it, and have strong opinions. However, I can imagine the untrammeled vitriol to the above statement which might seem to endorse Beth, Bath and Beyond as well as replication of artistic images into cheap commodities, and admit that I fear it. I know there are undoubtedly people whose livelihoods are based on the disavowal of Koch, Williams, or both, as well as their champions, and also fear that it is not my place to take their place.]  

While I have not written a spoof of “This is Just to Say,” I have written variations and imitations of Williams’ poems in recent years. I went to them as instructors because I sought change in my approach to composition; they have taught me economy and simplicity in word choice, line breaks, and free verse forms, as well as complexity, length and masterful digression—there is his "Wheelbarrow" but also his "Asphodel" and both are American poetic masterpieces which can teach us much about technique. Williams also shows one how to observe the truth of a situation with a cold eye but not with a cold heart. Take, for instance, the young woman in “The Young Housewife,” leaving her domestic confines of a house that she is wife to, but is not hers: "At ten AM the young housewife / moves about in negligee behind / the wooden walls of her husband's house. / I pass solitary in my car."

At the end, when the speaker says, “I bow and pass smiling” we find that his propriety and politeness are mixed up with erotic feeling toward the housewife who dresses too revealingly in her daily routines with male tradesmen. This is the daily life of many of us, our impulses, erotic or otherwise, held in check by polite gestures. As observers we take it in, nod, feel what we feel, and pass on our way, neither heroic nor heinous. Williams is not without his bold assertions, though, such as the first line of "For Elsie" : “The pure products of America go crazy.” I think about that line often. While the type of person it describes may no longer exist, there are newer “pure products” of America that we can observe around us: products of mass media and mass culture, perhaps an empty-suit politician, hypocritical preacher or drug addicted starlet: these too are America’s pure products.  

I admire very much Williams’ insistence on American writers finding our own traditions, writing in the American grain in the voice of Polish grandmothers, as is often cited—because it is a tradition that works and will keep on working for us: the Polish grandmother substituted today by the voices of Persian, Vietnamese, East Indian (et cetera), grandmothers and the insertion of their voices, as well as foreign words that are part of a poet’s vernacular, finding their place in lines of poetry, following the growing and changing American language as well as its changing populace. I hope that poets in the future will look to Williams' example for his truth-telling observations as well.    

   

Comments

[DL]

That's a great point you make about "Beth, Bath and Beyond," as you call it in your bracketed aside.

[Stephanie Brown]

Thank you, DL. I almost cut out that paragraph, too.