Things Seen in Flowers: Poetry and the Occult Spring [Dorothea Lasky]

Roses, daises, pansies, violets, sunflowers, lilies, buttercups, poppies, and peonies. Flowers are things that many poets use in their poems and we associate them with love, life, heath, and growth or the direct opposite of these ideas. But flowers in poems can mean other unexpected things, too. In this craft class, we will explore the multitude of weirdness and wonder in poems that contain flowers. We will read poems by William Blake, Bhanu Kapil, Toi Derricotte, H.D., Pablo Neruda, Cornelius Eady, and Marilyn Chin, among others, which use flowers in strange and new ways. We will write our own poems too, inspired by these poets and sparked by some living and non-living flowers. And in doing all of this work, we will explore the great green mystery of life, which haunts us poets, which haunts all of us.