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| Anonymous artist Vase of Flowers ca. 1830 tempera on paper Brooklyn Museum |
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| Severin Roesen Still Life - Flowers in a Basket ca. 1850-60 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Berthe Morisot White Flowers in a Bowl 1885 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
from Haunted Landscape
Where the glacier leaves off and in the thundering of surf
And rock, something, some note or other, gets lost,
And we have this to look back on, not much, but a sign
Of the petty ordering of our days as it was created and led us
By the nose through itself, and now it has happened
And we have it to look at, and have to look at it
For the good it now possesses which has shrunk from the
Outline surrounding it to a little heap or handful near the center.
Others call this old age or stupidity, and we, living
In that commodity, know how only it can enchant the dear soul
Building up dreams through the night that are cast down
At the end with a graceful roar, like chimes swaying out over
The phantom village. It is our best chance of passing
Unnoticed into the dream and all that the outside said about it,
Carrying all that back to the source of so much that was precious.
At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a "miracle,"
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle . . .
– John Ashbery, published in As We Know (Viking Press, 1979)
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| Gustave Courbet Hollyhocks in a Copper Bowl 1872 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Charles Caryl Coleman Still Life - Azaleas and Apple Blossoms 1878 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| John La Farge White Camellia in a Red and Black Lacquer Bowl ca. 1880-90 watercolor Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Roses in a Glass Vase 1890 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Charles Sheeler Three White Tulips 1912 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Marsden Hartley Tinseled Flowers 1917 tempera, silver foil and gold foil on glass Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Eliot Hodgkin Pink and White Roses 1952 tempera on board Jerwood Collection, London |
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| Constance Louisa Stallard Black Lilies before 1954 tempera on board Southampton City Art Gallery |
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| Manuel Neri Untitled - Floral Study #4 1957 tempera on paper Minneapolis Institute of Art |
from Lover of Flowers
In our family everyone loves flowers.
That's why the graves are so odd:
no flowers, just padlocks of grass,
and in the center, plaques of granite,
the inscription terse, the shallow letters
sometimes filling with dirt.
To clean them out, you use your handkerchief.
With my sister, it's different,
it's an obsession. Weekends, she sits on my mother's porch,
reading catalogues. Every autumn, she plants bulbs by the brick stoop;
every spring, waits for flowers.
No one discusses cost. It's understood
my mother pays; after all,
it's her garden, every flower
planted for my father. They both see
the house as his true grave.
Not everything thrives on Long Island.
Sometimes the summer gets too hot;
sometimes a heavy rain beats down the flowers.
That's how the poppies died, after one day,
because they're very fragile.
– Louise Glück, published in Ararat (Ecco Press, 1990)
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| Anne Redpath Lenten Roses 1960 watercolour on board Tate Gallery |
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| Norman Douglas Hutchinson Lilies and Tulips 1989 tempera on paper Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery |