Bill and Flossie Williams
“Hitler Invades Poland“ (1939)
________
it must be understood that World War l
changed everything, the old order,
orders, had been discredited, new
states were formed, territories allotted,
-isms proliferated, the arts had to, of
course, reflect that, and did, as many
-isms were hatched in the art world
as in the political world, indeed,
many more
which is why much of it at first
seems questionable, practitioners
were learning anew how to talk, paint,
make music, they were creating a new
conceptual universe to replace the one
that had been roundly discredited, the
one that had been around in the West
for the last two thousand years
therefore Schoenberg, therefore
Picasso, and therefore “Finnegan’s
Wake“, for instance
we’ve been studying American
Modernists in the classes on the
Internet I’m taking, none of whom
I find interesting, and I’m, contrary
to all expectations, losing even my
early enthusiasm for the much too
thorny, I think, Emily Dickinson
but here’s another abstruse poet
that I like in this poem
though I much prefer his wife
Flossie’s sardonic reply, which
follows
________________
This Is Just To Say (1934)
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
________________
Flossie’s Reply (1934)
Dear Bill: I’ve made a
couple of sandwiches for you.
In the ice-box you’ll find
blue-berries–a cup of grapefruit
a glass of cold coffee.
On the stove is the tea-pot
with enough tea leaves
for you to make tea if you
prefer–Just light the gas–
boil the water and put it in the tea
Plenty of bread in the bread-box
and butter and eggs–
I didn’t know just what to
make for you. Several people
called up about office hours–
See you later. Love. Floss.
Please switch off the telephone.
Florence Williams
____________
go Florence, I say, but you can
see, of course, why I’d say that
Richard
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