Wordy Wednesday: "This is Just to Say"

Today we celebrate Wordy Wednesday with a poem by
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963):

"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

This is one of my favorite poems to read in class. Students in Introduction to Poetry have usually been treated to a fair amount of Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Keats and Tennyson before we get here. And then they read the poem and wonder if they read it right.

As with all poems, and texts really, we begin with the story. Who are the characters? What has happened? And then we break it down from there. There is a Speaker, an "I." And there is an Audience to whom the Speaker of the poem is speaking, the "you." The Speaker has eaten plums out of the icebox. The Audience was probably saving them breakfast.

What's fun about this poem is the "Sorry, but not sorry" aspect that is communicated in such a short amount of space. We know this Speaker. We may live with this Speaker. We may even sometimes be this Speaker. This Speaker is not a nice person. Or maybe we are the Audience. Maybe we have been on the receiving end of the Speaker's not-so-sincere apology that is really just an opportunity to rub it in our faces. In all likelihood, we can relate to both. And those plums, those plums we were saving for breakfast? Those plums are nothing less than the hopes and dreams that have been mercilessly and humorously snatched away from us by the Plum Thief.

For today's exercise, I invite you to play a game of Mad Libs. I just love Mad Libs and use it a lot in my teaching exercises. What I would like you to do is to simply start replacing words in the poem with your own. Try to keep the form and tone of the poem as close to the original as possible, but be creative and have fun. You can Google "This is Just to Say Parody" to find more examples online. And please feel free to post your attempts on the Getting Literature FB Group Page.

Here is my attempt to get you started. Enjoy!

"This is Just to Recycle"

I have recycled
the papers
that were in the boxes

and which
I will probably
need
for something or other.

Forgive me
they were depressing
so dusty
and so useless.

PS Thanks to Tiffany Sigler Rumbalski's "Poem a Day" FB Group for the inspiration for today's post. 

Meaningful Monday: The Meaning of Punctuation

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Today's Meaningful Monday post is about the meaning of punctuation. I know that many writers freak out about correctness and then stress out over the thought of red ink covering their writing, but I've always maintained that punctuation is a tool to aid understanding and not intended to invoke a panic attack. The goal is to avoid distracting errors that make writing hard to understand. If you write, you are going to make mistakes. Writers are human. Errors are gonna happen. You just want to make sure that you are familiar with the rules that govern meaning. Misplacing a comma can change the meaning of a sentence. You want to make sure that your writing means what you want it to mean. It's not about perfection; it's about meaning what you write.

English is a difficult language and many of its grammar rules don't make sense. There. I wrote it. Deal with it. I still remember studying Japanese in high school and feeling suspicious that there weren't irregular verbs lurking all over the place and that it was that easy to change a verb into past tense. It made sense. It was logical. It was everything English is not.

That being said, English grammar doesn't have to be so awful and painful. There are fantastic resources available to help you figure things out when you have questions. And the more you learn about grammar and style, the easier it becomes to learn more about proper writing. One of my favorite resources that everyone should definitely check out is Grammar Girl. The Grammar Girl podcast, created by Mignon, includes short episodes that are usually under 10 minutes and focus on one tip at a time for easy digestion. I love that she also includes the transcript of the podcast on her website so you can see the examples she is referencing. She also has a few books out for those of us who prefer flipping through pages instead of scrolling through screens to find the answer.

Got a question about a comma? Not sure about that possessive? Should you write "affect" or "effect"? Check out Grammar Girl. She's got the answers you're looking for. Enjoy!