Tag: roses

“Too much as they are to be changed by metaphor,
Too actual, things that in being real
Make any imaginings of them lesser things“

Here I give you a picture; a still life
solid with the weight of all dimensions.
An old rose bowl 

etched and leaded the glass, dense with design.
Diamond cuts accumulating sunlight 
casting off prisms

with petal hues that mark the table-top.
Polished and jungle dark, mahogany
mirroring roses 

Gloire de Dijons, picked fresh at morning light
pin-tucked cups, brim-full of fruity fragrance.
All the staged ages 

mingling apricot creams, pinks tinted gold.
Already I hear a lexicon stir
in praise of glory 

the glory of old roses, soon over
but it's really desire for sensation
a love of Romance.

For her poetics prompt, Concrete or Abstract? Ingrid asks us to write a concrete poem, one devoid of abstract subject matter and imagery. I do not think I achieved this here but it is a worthy exercise to exorcise Romantic tendencies sometimes!
Note: The epigraph is from Wallace Stevens’ poem: ‘Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight’ which at first sight reads like a concrete poem but on further analysis the poet seems to be saying that we can never truly experience the concreteness of roses because our senses transform them as much as an abstraction of them might, though differently. See the full poem with an excellent critique by Gray Jacobik