Title text:
My icebox plum trap easily captured William Carlos Williams. It took much less work than the infinite looping network of diverging paths I had to build in that yellow wood to ensnare Robert Frost.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3209/
Wow, I wasn’t cultured enough to get the reference to William Carlos Williams. Frost, yes, of course.
Looking up the poem, I have certainly heard it before.
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
Never heard of the guy (not American) so I thought this was how we learned about Randall Monroe’s carbon monoxide leak.
This is one of those moments where my lack of cultural understanding rears up, because this is where I say “how is that a poem” and it becomes evidence of some kind of bigotry.
It is a poem because poems are structured in lines rather than sentences. For example, this paragraph is prose.
.
.
.
This is a poem
Because poems are made of lines
Rather than sentences.
It’s very easy
Anyone can do this now
Even you and mePrecisely!
Of course, saying anything can be poetry is like saying anything can be music - while it is true, tastes vary and not everything will seem like “good poetry” to everyone. And that’s ok!
I think people struggle with it because when you’re a little kid poetry is taught as having to rhyme and have a particular format. Then you get older and run into shit like this.
e e cummings [yes that is capitalized and punctuated properly] was a master of using lines and space.
Hi, Coo.
It was on the wall in my English class, with a black and white photograph of some cherries.
I always thought it was weird, but I never forgot it.
Depending on the photo, without size context clues, I would probably have a hard time telling them apart.
Oh no. It was that very typical “two cherries on a joined stem” picture, like you posted (but with two). Pretty sure plums don’t grow like that.
the plum tree out my front window doesn’t.
Oh yes! That’s familiar.
