There’s a drawing
of the family
on the refrigerator,
from his daughter.
Stick figures
in crayon.
She’s got him
with a round head
and a ridiculous smile.
He’ll probably never know
where she got the smile from.
.
See now, this poem is very much like the one about the cold plums. The images, combined the way they are, are quite enough to make a powerful statement. I have, though, that uncanny feeling that I’ve read this poem before, which is, generally speaking, a good thing (unless I really did read it before, but I doubt that).
This poem is a little fragment of life, a part representing the whole, as Frost would say, rich, rainey, in its suggestion (and more than enough to be anthologized in my opinion). Thumbs up.
You know, I still think the plum poem was about plums, damnit. It just seemed too literal to me, too closed. It didn’t leave me wondering. A slice of life poem ought to make one wonder what’s behind the scene that’s been painted.
I’m sure the plum poem does this and I am just inherently flawed in the way I read poetry.
Thanks for the thumbs up!
I think we should always take poems literally, and only later, can we build something extra, that is, if we choose too. For me, that plum one, aside from being a good example of imagery, displays the paradoxes inherent in many things; such as, sweet and cold, which is literal, but at the same time, can correspond to the plums being sweet literally, yet cold figuratively (since they were his wife’s plums). Or were they the last plums?- I can’t remember precisly. Anyway, I guess I just see it as an accurate statement on selfishness (maybe gluttony) which was said as simply as poetry allows one to say things. The most interesting aspect was the taking of something literal, which (in my mind) probably occured just the way it was described, and seeing the suggestivness in the literal. As, I think it was Ezra Pound who said, (not sure though) “the image is always the adequate symbol.”
There, now I’ve bored you to tears with my meanderings on the essence of poetry - I’ll stop now before I really put the plum in my mouth.
You haven’t bored me at all. And your comments on poetry under the other thread were wonderful. (You’ll be pleased to know I’ve stopped writing the poem I was currently working on about my cat, even though he’s the cutest damn thing you’ve ever seen).
I can see I’m not gonna win the battle of the Williams’ poem. Not to beat a dead plum, but your seeing of the suggestiveness in the literal is something, I would suggest, that has more to do with you than with the poet. I mentioned this to Daybreak when he read volumes into a poem I scratched out in ten seconds. (It might have actually been twelve). Where’s the credit go? What talent does it take? Williams might as well have been (with this particular poem) a reporter. Is Katie Couric a poet if I watch her deliver a piece of news that “suggests†something more profound to me?
…your seeing of the suggestiveness in the literal is something, I would suggest, that has more to do with you than with the poet. I mentioned this to Daybreak when he read volumes into a poem I scratched out in ten seconds. (It might have actually been twelve). Where’s the credit go? What talent does it take? Williams might as well have been (with this particular poem) a reporter. Is Katie Couric a poet if I watch her deliver a piece of news that “suggests†something more profound to me?
I suggest that it is you, not the williams’ poem, that are closed. To truly grasp the msg. in Williams’ Plums poem, it would be helpful to try to read what is not being said more than what is being said - e.g read between the lines. It’s like a musician friend of mine when he said he’d like to learn the notes B.B. King doesn’t play meaning that the quiet spaces between struck notes are just as important as the notes themselves. When analyzing Williams’ poem, don’t let its apparent superficial simplicity get in the way of encountering a great poem for you, but pay close attention to the presentation/layout of the poem (i.e.: the line-stanza structure and its graphic footprint on the page), the word choice and how that relates to the presentation/layout and most of all the confessional tone of the piece. It’s very zen-like naked compositioon with needless ornamentation (e.g.: linguistic acrobatics) discarded leaving only what is absolutely essential Think of the fact that an icebox refers to a freezer and not a refrigerator where fruit is most often stored to keep longer than would be the case if left out on the counter in room temperature. Then think about how the words ice and cold reflect on the fruit, the original owner of the fruit and the one who ate the fruit without asking first and the fact that he chose to end the poem with the word cold, not cool. Does this mean that Williams’ took pleasure in being cold in the act of eating his “wife’s” cold fruit and he was being cold himself to spite her in a game of one-uppance that couples often take part in?
But that’s another topic. Now, about your poem of the child’s stick figure art on the refrigerator. This poem doe s the same for me what Williams’ Plums poem does in that its focussed simplicity delivers a phantom punch that though it’s not a knock-out blow, it nonetheless does have a subtle profunditty that shifts something inside of me. I like the way you personify the stick figure characters and their facial expressions.
Nels.
Thanks Nels. I appreciate the comments.
As for the plum poem, I have confessed elsewhere that I am a hopeless lost cause. Sorry.