This Is Just to Say

If a poem as slender and as playful as “This Is Just to Say” can be said to explore a specific situation, a specific context, that context would involve the suspiciously whimsical plea for forgiveness from an offending spouse for pilfering fruit from the fridge. Because Williams himself has provided that context—he was leaving one morning, heading off to his patient appointments, and delighted in snatching some plums from the icebox, and, feeling a bit guilty that perhaps his wife might be looking for the same fruit, left the note that, once sculpted into quatrains, became the poem—the poem has excited much analysis about the nature of domestic relationships, the power of asking for forgiveness, and the question of insincere apologies as the speaker appears, in the last quatrain, to offer at best a half-hearted apology. His relish of the chilled fruit, offered so blatantly and unironically, would seem to cast some doubt over the sincerity of his apology. Forgive me, he says, but…wow, the fruit I am guessing you wanted to enjoy for breakfast was good, really sweet and so cold.