This Is Just to Say

In a 1950 interview, John W. Gerber asked the poet what it is that makes "This Is Just to Say" a poem; Williams replied, "In the first place, it's metrically absolutely regular ...

"[4] Critic Marjorie Perloff writes, "on the page, the three little quatrains look alike; they have roughly the same physical shape.

It is typography rather than any kind of phonemic recurrence that provides directions for the speaking voice (or for the eye that reads the lines silently) and that teases out the poem's meanings.

"[4] Additionally, this typographical structure influences any subsequent interpretation on the part of the reader.

[6] Since Williams chose to include the "reply" in his own sequence it seems likely that he took a note left by his wife and turned it into a "poem".