Florence Williams's (Williams's wife) 'reply' to This Is Just to Say is included as a 'Detail' in the partially published Detail & Parody for the poem Paterson (a manuscript at SUNY Buffalo)[2] first appearing in 1982.[3] Since Williams chose to include the 'reply' in his own sequence it seems likely that he took a note left by his wife and turned it into a 'poem'.[2]