We've all absorbed Williams' examples so well that his "I do this, I do that" poems (except it's patients & Elsie & Kathleen & a Negro woman who do this or that) almost no longer demonstrate his startling freshness (although they do!). I remember an acquaintance, burning with indignation, saying "This Is Just to Say"—the famous "plums" poem—was "nothing but a shopping list!" Sure! And how specific & useful is a shopping list! But of course she meant that it wasn't a poem, it was something anyone could have written. Sure! How great is that! Anyone paying attention—24 hours a day for their whole entire life—could no doubt write a poem as spare & perfect as those of Williams'. You always get the idea that he wishes everyone would write poems like his. It's not just he's not an egomaniac about being "the one" to do it, but if we all wrote poems, we'd all get the news, we'd all be clearer about politics, work, the environment and the rest of our troubling concerns.
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