vandiemenspeak
vandiemenspeak
Jun 04, 2017

The hidden vocabulary.

This secret language of flowers,
this hidden vocabulary;
the colour that a word empowers,
to paint a stem from you to me.

If, by artful pollination,
floriography can flow,
communing in that old notation,
parlance then, will let me know.

In nursing this covert oration,
the yellow rose should slowly show;
or, bloom blackened by dark negation,
the last and lonely rose might grow.

Or wholly clasp the stem of glume,
in spite of thorns, endure all cuts;
for blood red rose, that beating bloom,
where softest petal slowly shuts.

For seasons come, and flowers dry,
and life in autumn's garden falls;
but year on year, returning try,
and if you sing, then I will call.

About This Poem

Last Few Words: This is connected to a book I picked up, and the lost language of flowers, mentioned by Leopold Bloom in Ulysses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers - it was common in Victorian social circles, to carry around a dictionary of such "floriography" - a kind of social, interpersonal and entirely unique cryptography, which I find interesting..

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Editing - draft

About the Author

Region, Country: Tasmania,Australia,Earth,Solar Systems,Milky way,Pint of Guniess, AUS

Favorite Poets: Glen Richards

More from this author

Comments

wesley snow

Good metric structure, a lovely set of rhyme and a subject wholly new to me.
I wish I could tear it apart and help you improve, but I cannot.

vandiemenspeak

But I'll sort them out. Structure begat creation, this is obvious to me when I think about it. There are plenty of reasons to write a Petrarchan sonnet, or heroic blank verse - when free verse would just be lazy, and form does make you think deeply about the "better" word -

"The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor — dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor." W.H. Auden

True free verse then is hard to achieve, which is why, I think that elements of western form, do creep into any free verse that truly engages (and I do my darned best to slot them in there, believe me).

Thanks for the feedback.

Chris.

Eumolpus

Good job with it. I will need a larger vocabulary too!
I was reading this poem in the National Arboretum in Washington DC, all alone among thousands of flowers on a perfect day. Very nice read. Thanks for the notes!
(As above, I have nothing else to say! All good.

vandiemenspeak

And had to to/am actively researching this. I work with computers (oddly enough) the physics of poetry/the poetry of physics etc. - and cryptography is something that's always intrigued me. This was a kinda, sorta primitive Victorian social cryptography.

Will be doing some updates and bug fixes, in that spirit! Not to make this field of flowers approach anything like sterility.

Thanks again.

Chris.

S

floriograpy...thank you for that.
Now a few ideas :
S-1,l-4 Try sprout instead of paint
S-3,l-2 try might instead of could
S-3,l-3 swap places with blackened and bloom
S-4,l-2 change endure to enduring and delete comma
As usual feel free to use any or none......stan

jane210660

Read this and immediately loved it.
I love these two lines
'If, by artful pollination,
floriography can flow,'
I didn't know the significance of various flowers, so looked them up.
Yellow rose of friendship and blackened bloom of death. Red rose of love.
I think this is a lovely optimist love poem.
Jx

vandiemenspeak

It was a new one on me also - I noticed a bit in the inner monologue of Bloom (obvious really) in Joyce, Ulysses, where he talks of the language of flowers, during his surreptitious communication, as Henry Flowers. That led me down a rabbit hole of digging, and yes..(important word) - it was very common in the Victorian era, for the entirely appropriate, gentle form of communication in this "language of flowers" - many guides were published, and it became an art form of floral ensemble - a civilised way to convey a desire, friendship, love and more, in that most respectable way.

Yours, in yellow roses :)

Chris.

PS for the rabbit hole proper, signup to jstor, and check this: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25476540?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents