A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
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 iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Edit: Markdown for Lemmy instances possibly fixed
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 me
Precisely!
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.
Markdown broke the formatting, here's the proper version:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Mbin doesn't require two spaces at the ends of consecutive lines. I was aware that Lemmy might, but I was also prefacing each line with a ">", so I figured that would keep them separate.
Huh. It's impressive how many slightly different markdown versions there are
Oh yes! That's familiar.
Def a more niche reference I feel:
This is a reference to the William Carlos Williams poem This Is Just to Say, in which the narrator is apologizing for eating the plums in the icebox. In this comic, the joke is that Cueball, learning that the person out of view has left themselves some plums in the refrigerator for tomorrow, cannot resist eating them as a reference to the poem.
His characters have names? TIL.
It's rather the ExplainXKCD lore. Recurring-looking characters have been assigned names, even though they clearly denote different people in the comic. (Although Black Hat is always up to some antics.)
Well, sometimes they denote different people. They also sometimes represent recurring characters.
Beret Guy, Black Hat, and Danish are the same character each time.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ponytail and White Hat are just whoever the comic needs at the time. Sometimes they show signs they're a recurring character, but usually probably just a one-off.
In the middle of the spectrum are Cueball and Megan. These are the generic male and female designs and the most frequently seen. They're usually probably just one-offs, but both have two distinct recurring roles as well. The first is Cueball as an unnamed male character and Megan as Megan, with the two of them being a couple. The second is Cueball as the comic's author and Megan as his wife, with this being most apparent in the cancer strips.
I've seen some early comic or somesuch where Black Hat was in some far-fetched alternative history scenario, way more evil than his usual everyday discordian approach. So he also gets repurposed outside the normal character, as a villain.
Yeah lol.
Cueball, beret guy, white and black hat, ponytail, Megan are a few I can remember
I believe most don't officially