Both flower and flower gatherer: Medbh McGuckian's The Flower Master and H.D.'s Sea Garden

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 2003 by Lesley Wheeler

Two poems on botanically related flowers--H.D.'s iris and McGuckian's gladiolus--begin to illuminate these contrasts. H.D.'s volume, which celebrates a dangerous, liminal landscape, includes five poems with parallel titles and subjects: "Sea Rose," "Sea Lily," "Sea Poppies," "Sea Violet," and "Sea Iris." In each, she depicts a flower rendered more precious through its exposure to a harsh environment. "Sea Iris" (Collected Poems 36-37) emphasizes the flower's struggle to endure, naming it "weed" and describing it as "brittle," "broken," and "thin." Like an object of art, the iris is "painted" and "stained"; like a maker of art, it "print[s] a shadow" and "drag[s] up colour" through its roots in the sand, transforming its sources. The single flower in the first section becomes a "band" in the second, parallel to the elite group of seekers populating many poems in this collection and reinforcing the identification between poet and flower. The word iris itself indicates the visual nature of H.D.'s imagist poems, indicating not only the colored membrane of the eye but the Greek messenger goddess, whose sign is the rainbow. When H.D. compares the clump of flowers to a "fresh prow," she conjures that Hellenic reference, suggesting that the iris, too, performs a stimulating errand, transporting its discoverer in a metaphorical sense. Appropriately, in the Victorian language of flowers, the iris signified "message" or "messenger" (Seaton 180-81).

"Gladiolus," new to the 1993 edition of McGuckian's volume (31), treats a related plant, like the iris in its sword-shaped leaves and spike of brilliant flowers. The poem contains only 12 lines, most of which extend a further beat or two than those in "Sea Iris." While H.D. addresses the iris, McGuckian describes her gladiolus as if in a gardener's manual, meticulously remarking its "stately flowers," the shade and structure of the foliage, and its method of reproduction. Thrifty and eager to please, McGuckian's gladiolus "will not exhaust the ground" and possesses as "its only aim the art / Of making itself loved." While the flower "step[s] free of its own / Foliage," exercising a limited freedom, the words "border plant" and "collared" stress containment. Unlike H.D.'s iris, this is a domesticated, not a wild plant; McGuckian even frames this flower between two greenhouse poems, "The Sun-Trap" and "The Orchid-House." While H.D.'s tone is sympathetic and praising, McGuckian mimics objectivity, positioning herself as an expert (a master) rather than an admirer. She demonstrates her mastery, too, in playful ways: the phrase "satiny moons / Of honesty," for instance, encrypts part of that plant's Latin name (Lunaria annua).

McGuckian's attitude toward the gladiolus remains one of the most interesting ambiguities of this brief poem. Like H.D.'s flowers, it exists as a poetic object and also generates art--if one concedes, at least, that "making oneself loved" constitutes a creative endeavor. While detailed description conveys the poet's fascination with the plant--she does devote an entire poem to it, without deploying the gladiolus as an obvious conceit for some other subject--McGuckian sounds distinctly arch at several points. For instance, her flower's method of survival involves not endurance despite a hostile world but manipulation of its own appeal and a susceptibility to the "roguish draught" that lays the ovules open for pollination. These passive virtues are stereotypically feminine; indeed, this lovable candidate for sunny garden borders resembles the familiar domestic angel, ambitious only to please in her limited sphere, devoted to reproduction.