[Rose Kelleher]

But, finely-written as it is, the garden scene can't help being a let-down after the invocation of the haunting melody and sadness of the song. You just can't pull off a mood-switch from pipers playing over 10,000 dead boyfriends, husbands, and fathers on the moors of Flodden to horticulture.

There's some precedent for it.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone

In Flanders Fields

"Then they stood there, in that flowered meadow
by the Scamander, an immense array,
as numerous as leaves and flowers in springtime."

[Susan McLean]

For me, the title presents the greatest difficulty because I don't catch the allusion and, without it, "wede" doesn't convey much. I didn't have any trouble with "soldier roses" because I assumed it meant the last outposts of roses, soldiering on into the bad weather. If something else was intended, I didn't catch it. I did not assume any other military references in the poem, because for me the flowers seemed to represent the seasons of life--youth, prime, late middle age, and a suggestion that old age is coming soon. I did balk a bit at the association of marigolds and poppies with "scents and ripeness." Their colors are bright, but their scents are unpleasant or nonexistent (at least, that is how they seem to me). Though the progression of seasons becomes relatively predictable, I like the ending very much.

Susan

[Lance Levens]

As Susan points out, this appears to be a "seasons of life" poem, and those may be predictable; but instead of tedium--which Susan implies--I sense closure and completion. I'm flower-challenged, but context
reveals sufficient necessities.

[FOsen]

I got the ubi sunt but not the military references, reading this as Susan did. I'm probably on a par with Michael and Lance where flowers are concerned, but I found this moving and well crafted. My problem is the title, which is obviously very evocative for others. Admittedly, I may not be the ideal reader, but "Wede Away" sounds like something made by Ortho.

Frank

[John Beaton]

There are plenty of successful poems and songs that liken dying soldiers to wilting flowers, and this could be one of them. But the title is very specific to one particular song, the one in the YouTube link above. Once the words and sounds of that song leap to mind, I don't think you can switch easily to hyacinths and wisterias.

It's a peculiar title problem. If you don't get the allusion, the title does nothing. If you do, I think it overpowers the poem.

John

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

I share John Beaton's reservation about the use made of the seasons in this poem. The imagery is very beautiful, moving and finally somber, but the whole doesn't have the force of individual lines in it. The first line of the sestet has a metrical kink in it, at least to my ear.

[Alan Wickes]

Like others, even if I had not seen this elsewhere, I would have recognised the author. Really it should not be possible to write a convincing sonnet using flower imagery and changing seasons within a lament without becoming simply derivative. Yet this is a timeless classic and it would be ungenerous to see it as simply 'textbook stuff'.

So how does the poet pluck something extraordinary from such familiar material? Partly it's got to do with how well crafted this is - on all kinds of levels. The use of repeated phrases - giving it, as others have noted, the hint of a villanelle - that's very effective. Personally I think piling up references to different flowers does not detract from this at all but adds a rich blossoming effect. It is this central contradiction between the blossoming flowers and the sense of withering, mournful loss which makes this so memorable.

Yes, of course it's been done before, but the poem does stand up well amongst its famous antecedents and that is no mean feat; moreover the illustrious ancestors mentioned - 'In Flanders Field' et al, are not sonnets and I cannot bring to mind an actual sonnet covers this territory quite as well as this. That being said, I'm not sure it is quite fair of Mary to post a passage from Hamlet as a comparative example!

Alan

[Chris Childers]

I object to objections to "towards." I pronounce it as one syllable generally, but it is clear what the meter wants me to do, and rather than be intransigent, I oblige. Everyone should be like me.

I read this without recognizing or worrying too much about the title, and I found it a nice poem about getting old, in the vein (if not the league) of 'that time of year thou mayst in me behold.' (I'm not hugely fond of lines 5-6, which seem competent but unexceptional.) I also didn't worry about the flowers, though from Catherine's careful explication, I see that I missed a lot. But I thought it was perfectly comprehensible without all that. The explication adds layers, but it is unnecessary to basic understanding.

It's baffling that the meter has garnered so much discussion. The poem is metrically FINE, even accomplished. But all the meter chat feels like the old days, when this place was more about coloring in the lines than it has since become.

The poem is pretty, and good. Doesn't set me on fire, but so much the worse for me.

Chris

[T.S. Kerrigan]

I'm puzzled by the quibbles about the difficuty of this poem. Anything that is discernible from standard reference sources is fair game. To be unaware of the native fauna and flora, moreover, is to be a stranger in one's own land. The appreciation of this poem is more than worth the perceived difficulties.

[T.S. Kerrigan]

I would have to say that so far this seems to me head and shoulders above the rest.