new criticism

NEW CRITICISM

- it is a movement in American literary criticism from the 1930s to the 1960s, concentrating on the verbal complexities and ambiguities of short poems considered as self-sufficient objects without attention to their origins or effects.   

~ This is structured in the way.

~You have to read and carefully understand the meaning of the text.     

~ Meaning resides on the text - not in reader, author, or word

THIS IS JUST TO SAY - William Carlos Williams

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

CRITICISM:

The title of the poem - This Is Just To say means that the author, if he were the one talking the poem, has no intention for giving the poem a double meaning, based on what I have understood and have read, the poem contains no idioms and intended to just say whatever he wants to say.

As I focused in the lines of the poems, I noticed that the speaker of the poem is asking forgiveness for having eaten the plums that were in the icebox.The speaker said "were in the ice box" so meaning the plums could no longer be in the icebox but the speaker was already digesting it!

In the last lines of the poems, the Speaker is describing how sweet, how juicy the plums were, but of course this will make the "you" in the poem feel worse because he has nothing to eat already.

But as I read again the poem, I think that he really describes the plums so that the "you" the speaker was addressing would somehow know that the speaker really appreciate the plums.

The setting is in the kitchen of the term icebox.

The Speaker probably the one who is going to left the house ahead of anybody and cannot find anything for breakfast and saw the plums that was in the icebox and ate it instead so he left the note about he, eaten the plums and after he ask forgiveness he changed it into describing the plums. so maybe the speaker is not quite really sorry after eating the plums.

That I Think is the meaning of the poem. In existentialism theory, you have to careful analyze the true meaning of the text.

In this poem if you don't read it carefully you might mistake it for having a double meaning, but is just actually saying he was sorry for having eaten the plums that were in the icebox that was supposed to be saved for breakfast.