We can’t always promise you bouquets of flowers, but we can promise you bouquets of poems about flowers. Of course, in the world of poetry, a flower is never just a flower. As Grace Hazard Conkling writes, “It is because I am afraid of my heart / That I write about clouds and flowers…”
Here are seven of our favorites, picked fresh for you just in time for National Poetry Month:
“Dairy Written on Peony Petals,” Grace Hazard Conkling
“[to make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,]” Emily Dickinson
“Extreme Wisteria,” Lucie Brock-Broido
“On Flower Wreath Hill,” Kenneth Rexroth
“Flower of Five Blossoms,” Galway Kinnell
“Of Asphodel,” William Carlos Williams
Want more poems? Check out the Poetry Magazine archives on JSTOR.
Want more flowers? JSTOR Global Plants offers digitized plant specimens, including these asphodel.
