by Norman
Todd – April 2001
In my copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations there are 110 listings for roses and none for rhododendrons.In the main part, I suppose that this is due to roses having been known from classical times.It is probably because most roses are fragrant and their name has only one syllable and four letters.Lumbered with a name that has twelve letters and four syllables and not at all well known until a century and a half ago, it is perhaps excusable that our favourite flower has had short shrift from the literary world.
In
the past couple of days I’ve come face to face with a small posy of poets.They
assure me that this is not a serious life threatening experience.One
of them, Patrick Lane, was kind enough to send me a copy of Al Purdy’s
poem ‘Arctic Rhododendrons’ which is the only poemknown
to Patrick ‘on such flowers’.Here
it is.
They are small
purple surprises
In the river’s
white racket
And after
you’ve seen them
a number of
times
in water-places
where the
silence seems
related to
river-thunder
you think
of them as ‘noisy flowers’
Years ago
It may have
been
that lovers
came this way
stopped at
the outdoor hotel
to watch the
water floorshow
and lying
prone together
where the
purged green
boils to a
white heat
and the shore
trembles
like a stone
song
with bodies
touching
flowers were
their conversation
and love the
sound of a colour
that lasts
two weeks in August
and then dies
except for
the here or four
I pressed
in a letter
And sent whispering
to you
Pangnirtung
Perhaps
the American Rhododendron Society should attempt to correct the imbalance
between roses and rhododendrons, exercising some poetic justice, by sponsoring
a show of verse along with those of trusses and photographs.In
as much as poets are such a rare breed, and while their affliction iss
certainly not at all contagious, most of us could no more write a poem
than explain photosynthesis, still I think our club could help the literary
world a little by coming up with a collective word for rhododendrons.If
a group of curs can be recognized with a collective – ‘cowardice’, and
ladies with ‘bevy’ and rooks with ‘parliament’, then groups of rhododendrons
should be accorded similar status.I
will offer a prize of a rare rhododendron (small) – one of the Taliensia
subsection – as a prize to the entry deemed, by our editor, to be the most
evocative.