April Theme : FLOWERS

Who loves flowers more, painters or poets?

Throughout the month of April, perhaps jumping the gun a little, we’re going to look at flowers. They may not be out yet fully, as they are in May or June, but here in New York flowers have begun, gently, to sprout. (Today: overcast, rainy, approaching 70 degrees.) Spring is mostly in effect, climate change style. And so, flowers.

The flower is one of the oldest images in all of poetry, and you can trace its figures—stem, petal, thorn, its blushy colors—all the way back to Sappho and Qu Yan, two of the oldest poets we know by name.

Flowers, simply put, are a traditional poetic symbol of beauty. But digging just a little bit more below the obvious truism, there is a very old—and stubborn—gender story also happening here. Biologically, most plants are nonbinary (yay trans realism), having both of what is designated in the plant world as male or female. Yet leaving that aside (and as someone who does not believe in biology), what gender do flowers-as-symbols have?