love medicine and poems

Each of the works we read deals with an issue present in every day life. Love Medicine deals with the loss of a loved one, This Is Just To Say deals with temptation, and 1(a deals with falling, like that of a leaf from a tree. Though these themes seem banal, the writers form an interesting approach to each. The works are developed in such a way that they relate to one another. Despite the fact that loss, temptation, and falling are seemingly unrelated, these works connect on a deeper level by remaining open to interpretation.
William Carlos Williams’ poem, This Is Just To Say, is written in the style of a note one might find stuck to a refrigerator; it is presented as a very casual note about temptation. The way the narrator says, “They were delicious/ so sweet/ and so cold,” he reveals that he is not actually sorry for eating the plums. By describing the sensation of eating these plums, the narrator is only trying to make the person, who originally bought the plums, jealous or angry. This is similar to the way Grandpa Kashpaw isn’t sorry for sleeping with Lamartine in Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich. He is being selfish, just like the narrator, and giving into his temptations, which hurts someone who is close to him. However, like the plum situation, Grandpa Kashpaw’s cheating is treated as insignificant, because his wife chooses to stay with him. He never really gets punished for giving into his temptations, just like the plum eater never gets punished for stealing the plums. However, Grandpa Kashpaw’s death could be considered punishment for his unfaithfulness.
Grandpa Kashpaw dies towards the end of the excerpt from Love Medicine, when his wife tries to perform love medicine on him with the help of Lipsha. He ends up choking on the heart of a goose that was meant to bring the two grandparents back together. It is ironic that a heart is the cause of his death when it was his heart they were trying to mend. But when Grandpa dies, he not only enters the afterlife alone, but he leaves his wife alone too. She is left to mourn him while he “falls” into another life, just like the leaf falls in 1(a, by E. E. Cummings.
1(a is presented in very short lines which resemble a leaf actually floating to the ground. This helps add emphasis to the poem’s content, which is simply trying to communicate loneliness. The number 1 is repeated twice in the poem, adding emphasis to the fact that a single leaf is falling. This can be a metaphor for death and the fact that a person dies alone, much like Grandpa Kashpaw in Love Medicine. It also adds more meaning to Lipsha’s comment, “some people fall right through the holes in their life.” Like the leaf, people move onto the next stage of their life without including those who were so influential in the beginning. When Grandpa Kashpaw began to go “crazy,” he was no longer wholly present when he was with his family; he was alone in his own mind.
Love Medicine, This Is Just To Say, and 1(a all deal with significant issues that haunt us in our every day lives. We are always trying to prevent a serious loss, temptation, or fall. The authors of these works succeed in showing readers how each one of these devastations can be interrelated. Their themes are ambiguous, which allows readers to interpret them in a number of ways and find connections between each of them.