Poetry Exercise #1: This is Just to Say

"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"
         Emily Dickinson

In the following William Carlos Williams poem the speaker expresses the truth that we often enjoy things for which we are later compelled to apologize. A complexity of human emotion is that the enjoyment can be sincere and the apology can be sincere despite seeming to contradict each other. Here WCW gets at this complexity not by directly stating it but through a deceptively simple apology note. In other words he finds a "slant" way to tell the "truth."
(This exercise is adapted from Kenneth Koch's Rose, Where Did You Get That Red.)

This Is Just To Say
by 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

Exercise #1: Write an apology in the form of an unrhymed poem. You (or a fictional speaker) are apologizing even though you are either not entirely sorry or not just sorry but also in some way still pleased with what you did. Write the poem in very short lines (three words or so at most). Use plain and precise language; plums, icebox, breakfast, delicious, sweet, and cold are all precise words in WCW's poem. You might also experiment with line breaks and stanzas. Williams often breaks lines in the middle of phrases and clauses--"in/the icebok" "and which/you were probably/saving..."--but then in the last stanza each each line break comes at the end of a complete phrase. Finally, you might also want to avoid using punctuation especially if it isn't needed.