Shirley Wetzel's Version of William Carlos Williams' "This is just to say"

I was born in Comanche, Texas, but I soon got bored and hopped a train bound for Key West three weeks later, accompanied by my mother and big sister. My dad was in the Navy, and we bounced around the country, finally settling back in Texas. I started writing as soon as my fingers could hold a pencil, and have never stopped. Most of what I wrote was for my own amusement, but a few years ago I decided to get serious and started submitting personal essays, historical stories, and such to magazines, newspapers and anthologies. To my amazement, I sold most of them. My first love, though, is mystery. Last fall my first mystery short story was included in A Death in Texas, published by L&L Dreamspell. I love to travel, and have seen a lot of the world,
including Thailand, where I lived for two years, Guatemala, where I worked on a Highland Maya archaeological excavation, Turkey, Peru, and various parts of Mexico. My current work in progress is a mystery titled A Death in Comanche, and it's been in progress a loooong time. I write book reviews for overmydeadbody.com, and sometimes for Mysterious Morgue. My blog address is http://swetzel.wordpress.com


Our darling Kaye has politely asked me to talk a little about a writing/yoga retreat I attended a couple of weeks ago. You can quit twisting my arm now, Kaye :-) The retreat was in Belton, Texas, run by a wonderful lady named Patricia Lee Lewis, who conducts similar retreats all over the world.

Here’s the link to Patricia’s website: http://www.writingretreats.org/About/

If you click on her Wales retreat, you'll see St. Davids Cathedral - for those of you who know me, you'll know the importance of that. In the far right corner of the photo you can see Carn Llidi Mountain, where my mother's first husband lost his life in a plane crash in 1943. Patricia and I discovered we had many other things in common.

But that's not what Kaye asked me to talk about. One of the exercises Patricia assigned us was to use the model of the poem by William Carlos Williams, which will be familiar to many of you - Bill Crider said he used it to torture generations of his students. It's the kind of note you'd paste on the refrigerator ....


This is just to say

That 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
so cold
William Carlos Williams

And here's my version - it's totally fiction, I have no idea where it came from, I just put my pen to paper and it wrote itself down. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!:

This is just to say

That while you were away
I slept with the pool boy
in our marriage bed

I know this may upset you
but he was so sweet
so delicious
so HOT

Forgive me, or don't
I don't give a rat's ass
Ever since I saw you
screwing the maid
in the pool house
Shirley Wetzel May 29, 2009

You can have a lot of fun with this! There's even a wikipedia entry for it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Just_To_Say

I've written several more since the retreat, about people I work with, for example, and some of my friends have even commissioned me to write some for their particular situation, but it's more fun to write your own. Try it, you'll like it!