Poem Tryouts: The Language of Flowers

9: 49 a.m. — Atlanta

listening to The Weather Channel

Hello, all. It looks like Atlanta will continue to escape winter (a real winter). It also looks like the rest of the storm states are calming down some. Yesterday when one of the forecasters was tracking Octavia for us, he followed it through to NY and then he hesitated and, I kid you not, practically whispered ‘and then end in Boston’. They have received, in the last twenty-four days, ninety-five inches of snow. Mind boggling. We need cherry blossom time.

We are going to spend some time amongst the flowers. Whether your surroundings are showing early signs of spring, or fall flowers are beginning to show up, or if you are caught mid-winter, flowerless, it’s hard to deny the effect of seeing a bed of colourful pansies, or a swath of lemon yellow jonquils, or a bouquet of crimson roses. In California, golden poppies will soon line the highways. In Texas we will have the bright red of Indian Paintbrush sweeping us along the roads.

In Victorian times, when flowers were given, they came with a symbolic meaning. Men had to be careful. They couldn’t buy any old flower. God forbid you should hand a young woman a bouquet whose make-up spelled out the message: I am yours ’til the tides run dry, when what you wanted to say was Aren’t you a cute little thing.

For today’s poem, think a while on things you associate with flowers and access any flower memories you have. Jot notes in case you need to mix a couple of memories for detail.

You can describe the memory with the flower as the poem’s centrepiece. Or, the flower can be to the side but a strong sensory detail.

You can use the flower as a metaphor.

You can compose your own symbolic bouquet — more work, but this would be fun. You will need to give your readers a legend, or you can decide the context surrounding your flower choices are enough. I have given you a link, but it’s fun to explore and find charts with flower images alongside their meanings. I picked the most extensive, but it’s image-less.

Play with structure, whether you create with single blossoms, several different blooms, or beds of colour. Remember, flowers are all about sensory detail, every sense wrapped up in a single flower (sound? Hey, a study done way back when tells us flowers scream when picked — think on that one a while).

I look forward to reading your flowers. I will see you Thursday for links and things (already?!); Friday for the week’s roundup of prompts; and next Tuesday for our image prompt.

Happy writing, everyone.