William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”
William Carlos Williams is a leader of the imagist movement–an early 20th century literary movement that emphasized clarity and simplicity in its presentation of the subject. Like “This is Just to Say” imagist poems deal directly with the subject or object, using only the minimum amount of words needed to present the subject. Williams and other imagist poets demand that we be attentive to every word of the poem.
Warm-Up:
- As a group, identify a pattern happening in William Carlos Williams’s “This is Just to Say.”
- Using Hypothesis, highlight one word in the poem that you feel is most indicative of the pattern. In an annotation, try to describe what the pattern is.
