Why I Eat the Plums

I am an English Education major. Therefore, I will be teaching poetry and novels to teenagers for much of my life. Poetry is very rarely any one's favorite subject, and it's not my favorite either. To me, poetry requires too much thinking. Granted, sometimes thinking and finding meaning in a poem can be very rewarding, but I tend to be a pretty straightforward person. I say how I feel, and I'm not very cryptic. Poetry is often the opposite. It is cryptic, roundabout, and indirect. So reading poetry is a bit of a pleasureless task for me--most of the time.

My blog is named Eating the Plums in the Icebox because I recently read a poem (which is above my "about me")named "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams. It is a poem derived from a note he wrote to his family. see, WCW was a working man. He wasn't a professional poet. He didn't make a career out of writing poetry like T.S. Eliot did. He was a man who went to work before his family woke up most days, and came home when they were already in bed. So the way I picture it, he came home one night, hungry, and saw these plums his wife had. And he ate them. He wrote her an apologetic note, and upon seeing it later, decided it would make a pretty neat poem. and BAM! a poem. Now, this is all supposition, but I would be willing to wager something similar happened. So this is now a pretty decently famous poem. Famous enough, at least, for us to read it in college. This simple poem is beautiful. It's not complicated or tricky. It's a simple apology. So why can't other things in life be perceived as equally beautiful?