Sep 18 2020 - More of Just To Say

 

William Carlos Williams' poetry is quoted often.   There are other more quoted poets.  While I didn't look up who has the most quotes, I was fascinated by who is quoted most.  Here is the countdown.  Can you imagine that Alexander Pope is in the first position, and Shakespeare is down at fourth?  Some of the poets are referred to by first and surname, and others just by surname.  Is that sloppy naming conventions? No matter, this is a remarkable chart.        Here are the 50 best known lines of poetry: This is all from blog.inkyfool.com and is the Fifty Most Quoted Lines of Poetry.  The most quoted line from Alexander Pope is also the best known line of poetry: To err is human;  to forgive, divine. So back to William Carlos Williams and his imagist,  enjambed poems.  Here is one his most quoted, as compared to most parodied poems.  Would you like the interpretation?  Take a look at the line-by-line analysis HERE. The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon   a red wheel barrow   glazed with rain water   beside the white chickens Here are his words on poetry's place in our lives: It is difficult to get the news from poetry, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. Our layout pictures today seem the opposite of the poem above.  Nothing sparse here!

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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.

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