Love Poem With Toast

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Desire

The nature of human desire plays a major role in “Love Poem with Toast.” The poet ruminates throughout the poem about the different things people want and their reasons for wanting them. In the first two stanzas, Williams divides people’s actions into two categories; things we do “to make things happen” (Line 3) and things we do to “keep something” (Line 6) from happening. The poet posits that our actions, which stem from human desires, are caused by navigating these two poles. All of our wants and desires, the casual, routine, everyday human desires such as the want “for the water to boil” (Line 14) and to “not to run out of gas” (Line 17) to the deeper human desire of wanting a loved one by our side when we die (Lines 18-20), are a result of moving between these spheres of desire, of wanting things to happen and wanting to prevent other things, like death and aging, from taking shape.

Control

In “A Love Poem with Toast,” control plays a central role in navigating the desires that are in our control and those that are beyond it. It appears that far more is beyond our control in the poem than within it. For example, the things that are within our control have a simple cause and effect relationship and appear in the first stanza. They include “the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc, the car to start” (Lines 3-4). But in every stanza that follows, the wants appear to be beyond our control. For example, we cannot stop our “skin from aging, the hoe from rusting” (Line 7), “the truth from getting out” (Line 8), whether we are loved (Line 12), whether the “rain forest” survives (Line 13), if we get cancer (Line 15), when night falls (Line 16), or even the eventual exhaustion of gas (Line 17). Worst of all, we cannot even control who will be beside us at our death bed (Lines 18-19) or know if love can transcend death (Line 21). All we can do is want what we want, age, perhaps love, and die. Despite this inevitability, Williams also suggests that “pretending” allows some measure of control over the control. If the speaker and their lover “pretend” that everything is all right while eating breakfast, they might be better able to control the rest of the day’s narrative. In this sense, control mechanisms implemented by humans are more like coping mechanisms, or even daily practices that aid in orienting oneself against negative thoughts and desires. There’s no right or wrong to these coping mechanisms, per say, as long as people realize that there might not be any control over larger forces like death’s inevitability.