BA #1

I remember especially enjoying a poem from an introductory poetry class I had taken some semesters back; William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say”. It is a short, spiteful poem written in 1934 that reads as quickly and simple as a scratched note that Williams had left behind one morning after eating someone’s plums, saved in the icebox. Although Williams finally comes around to some sort of apology in the final lines with a simple “Forgive me”(9), the malevolent details of how thoroughly he enjoyed the plums overrides any such intention. I enjoyed it so much because of how so few lines could be so concise in delivering such a devilish tone. Williams’ voice inflicts a certain bent enjoyment in eating the plums: “they were so delicious”(10), after having just apologized for the fact. I suppose in retrospect I wish I had left simmilar notes on some occasions where I hadn’t. I’d love to know that whoever I left the note for would re-read it fifty times before finally convincing themselves--no, he didn’t apologize; and on top of that, he’s enjoyed it.

When we read Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting,” I noticed the same sort of truly unforgiving and arrogant tone in the hawk’s deviant ways. Although the hawk has nothing to apologize for (as in Williams’ speaker devouring someone else’s plums), there is a similar lack of remorse for its coldhearted actions—while sitting atop the world. So I suppose the defining link between the two poems is solely their demeaning tones and apathetic personas.