This is Just to Say Analysis by William Carlos Williams

Imagism

Imagism was a short-lived avant-garde poetry movement that lasted, roughly, from 1914 to 1917. Important figures in this movement included Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (who published as H.D.), and William Carlos Williams. By the early twentieth century, these and other poets had grown weary of the sentimentality and artifice that characterized the previous century’s poetry. Moving beyond the verse of recent generations, this group of poets explored a new kind of writing that emphasized economy of language and directness of presentation. Key to this new poetry was a radical simplification of subject matter and scope. Instead of pursuing ambitious themes about love, life, death, and everything in between, these experimental poets sought to focus on a single image—or scene, or experience—and reveal something essential about it. This singular focus on individual images gave birth to the new movement’s name: Imagism. Williams was a leading figure in the Imagist movement, and many of his best-remembered poems, such as “The Red Wheelbarrow,” are closely associated with it. Although Williams wrote “This Is Just to Say” in 1934, and hence long after Imagism’s heyday, the poem bears all the telltale signs of an Imagist poem.

The Great Depression

Williams wrote “This Is Just to Say” in 1934, which fell in the middle of the decade-long event known today as the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the United States experienced two major setbacks that together gave rise to the Great Depression. The first setback was economic, and it began with the collapse of the stock markets in later 1929. This collapse sent the financial state of the nation into a spiral and induced skyrocketing inflation. The second setback was a persistent drought that plagued the southern plains region of the United States. The drought became so severe that dust storms regularly plagued this area of the country, transforming the region into what became known as the “Dust Bowl.” Under normal climate circumstances, this region played a major role in American agricultural production. The devastation from the persistent drought exacerbated the country’s spiraling economic conditions. Specifically, it wreaked havoc on the U.S. food supply, and on the growth and distribution of fresh produce in particular. Within this context of economic and food insecurity, Williams’s poem about taking the last of the plums gains a new significance.

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