Garrison Keillor, American humorist, is still with us. While the Prairie Home Companion is no longer on our radio, he's written a memoir as well as The Lake Wobegon Virus where he takes us back to his small prairie town. You can read the first Chapter HERE.
And he writes every day: you can sign up for the daily Writer's Almanac HERE. It describes the Almanac as a uniquely calming combination of history and poetry.
Today's writing includes this quoted poem of the day by William Carlos Williams.
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
Keillor references the parodies of this poem. The parodies began in the 1960s with Kenneth Koch’s “Variations on William Carlos Williams.” Here's the first as an example:
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting. . .
Over time, the poem became a high school exercise example and students wrote their own versions. It has been taken up by many people and Here is a New York Magazine article on the poem with examples of recent Twitter parodies.
Perhaps we could find the little poem in the Little Library in Grimsby Beach on Betts Ave.
