this is just to say "thanks, but no thanks"

william carlos williams' poem "this is just to say" is a mainstay in high school poetry education. it's a wonderful short poem in the form of a mock apology to his wife:

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

he never actually says he's sorry. and when he says "you were probably saving" them for breakfast, he knows full well that the plums were for breakfast (notice: saving is the only word with its own line!). the poem is sweet, yet cold.

i had heard the poem a few times before but was reminded of it by this american life. the context?: the poem is that of a politician's apology. it gives the impression of apology, and in fact commands forgiveness through a performative utterance, yet there is no actual apology therein.

what was new to me in the radio program was hearing how often this poem is spoofed by other poets. everyone has their "this is just to say." some of my favorites:

i chopped down
the house that you had
been saving to live
in next summer.

i am sorry,
but it was morning,
and i had nothing to do
and its wooden beams
were so inviting.

another:

i have been wasting time
reading silly poems
that i found on
the internet

which
i should probably
have spent
working on my thesis

forgive me
they are so amusing
and i am so bored

and my own:

i have blogged
about something
i just heard
on the radio

and which
you probably
already heard
yourself

forgive me
but it was funny
like you and i
are not

it strikes me that musicologists need something equally as entertaining of their own. some famous easily spoofable gesture in scholarship for which we can all contribute our own versions.

i think i might have found one. it is not half-hearted apology but instea, the "thankless thank you." the examples i'm thinking of are those by taruskin and malcom brown surrounding the volkov debate.

in a nyt article from 2000, "casting a great composer as a great hero," taruskin blasts volkov's infamous book testimony. for those of you not familiar, testimony was supposedly made of shostakovich's collected "authentic" memoirs. laurel fay (sounds like james frey--deja vu anyone?) and others, however, discovered that the testimony was a hoax--in fact, a lot of the material in it was merely recycled other published russian memories. whoops.

taruskin, in his article, "thanks" volkov for his efforts:

let us now give the devil his due . . . many have disputed [testimony’s] authenticity. in the interests of full disclosure, i had better acknowledge that i am one such, and that i have received in consequence much abuse from those whose views i am about to critique.

but no matter how one feels about mr. volkov's methods, one must feel a certain gratitude for the role his book has played in the elevation of shostakovich's stock. it portrayed the composer as embittered by the mistreatment he had suffered and vengeful toward the soviet state, and toward the memory of stalin in particular. both in mr. volkov's annotations and in the text itself there were hints that shostakovich's works contained veiled (or not so veiled) ironies, even outright messages of protest. one of the most poignant revelations concerned the autobiographical eighth quartet, which has since become a repertory staple.

this was inspiring stuff. it played not only into cold-war stereotypes but also into the prejudices of a post-freudian age that trades heavily, in the words of the musicologist douglas johnson, ''on the notion that the more profound truth is the one that is repressed or concealed.” . . . more important, though, more people began listening to more of his works.

the thankless thank you. all the lying certainly made shostakovich more popular. good thing right? right. of course taruskin doesn't really want the lies to continue (they do) in order to serve shosty's popularity:

let's begin by returning our attention from our cold-war bedtime stories to his music and recognizing that our interpretations, and the purposes they serve, are ours, not his . . . encasing shostakovich in a bubble of dramatic fiction is a fool's game. bubbles burst.

in an article about ian macdonald's the new shostakovich, which defends and continues volkov's testimoy, iu emeritus malcolm brown gives similar "thanks":

[ian macdonald's] new shostakovich will undoubtedly provide belated prrogram annotators and hurried writers of record liner notes with grist to spare in turning out "creative" explications of shostakovich's music for decades to come.

burn. so there, i've started it. find and share your favorite scholarly thankless thank yous. or make your own. you could even put it in the form of a poem. i'll end with one my contribution:

dear far-too-many-people:
thanks for thinking
cage was a philosopher
not a
composer

and believing him
when he said
he didn't have an
ear for music

now i have something
on which to write
many essays.

so delicious, so sweet, so cold.