Love Poem With Toast

The nature of human desire plays a major role in “Love Poem with Toast.” The poet ruminates throughout the poem about the different things people want and their reasons for wanting them. In the first two stanzas, Williams divides people’s actions into two categories; things we do “to make things happen” (Line 3) and things we do to “keep something” (Line 6) from happening. The poet posits that our actions, which stem from human desires, are caused by navigating these two poles. All of our wants and desires, the casual, routine, everyday human desires such as the want “for the water to boil” (Line 14) and to “not to run out of gas” (Line 17) to the deeper human desire of wanting a loved one by our side when we die (Lines 18-20), are a result of moving between these spheres of desire, of wanting things to happen and wanting to prevent other things, like death and aging, from taking shape.