Clove and Carnation

What luck: I scored the last two quart pots of cheddar pinks at the big-box home improvement store this past weekend. More specifically, these are Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'Firewitch'. Like all pinks, the petals are serrated, as if cut by, uh, pinking shears. This dianthus is single-flowered in form, and has a vivid (but not harsh) color that's sometimes described as "magenta" (although it's not in-your-face) and sometimes described as "pink" (although it's not wimpy). It has soft, elegant needles for foliage, in a color that's blue-green, dusted with silver, which sets off the blooms to perfection.

Once I looked up the botanical name, I remembered that this was the flower Elisabeth Sheldon talked about wanting to fall face-down into with her last breath (see this prior post). I thought that was a nifty idea then, but now I realize that I didn't really, fully get it. The whole point, you see, is the scent of the flower, which you can't appreciate without plunging your face into the blooms, which are often described as "clove-scented". (But no, not quite like the cigarette favored by the Spartacist Youth Leaguer who thinks that showering regularly is too boo-zwah.) The fragrance is delicate and lovely, but so subtle that if you return to the flower too quickly, to partake of more, you lose it all, and smell nothing.

Pinks are (glossing over nuances that aren't really relevant here) carnations, and I always think of this poem when I think of the carnation: "Supernatural Love" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg. (This links to the poem via Amazon.com's "search inside the book" feature, which requires registration if you're not already a customer; here's another link to a copy of the poem which contains some typos that I hope aren't too distracting.) I read this poem when it was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, and I only remember falling instantly in love with it, and then needing to go take a long walk around the block immediately after reading it. I tore the page with the poem out of the magazine and kept it until The Lamplit Answer (Schnackenberg's first collection containing the poem) was published, returning to it many, many times over the years. Even now, more than twenty years later, the effect of the poem hasn't diminished. Carnation/carnatio/clou/clove/love: you think, at first, what a clever puzzle, just before it hits you, right in the gut. I'll think of this poem whenever I look at my new dianthus (Greek for flower of the gods), and I'll think, Good Lord, what a beautiful plant.


Postscript: While paging through The Lamplit Answer, I came across Schnackenberg's poem on Darwin, "Darwin in 1881". It's stunning, and I've updated my prior post on Darwin to include a bit of it, here.


The Lamplit Answer. Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982. ASIN 0374519781.

Comments

[avril]

I am loving your blog more and more with each visit. I strongly suspect you took your undergraduate degree in English, or at least considered it....And if you haven't already consumed all of Andrea Barrett's works, might I suggest "Ship Fever" as a starting place? She has a beautiful story about Mendel and his peas.

[Chan S.]

[*blush*] Thank you, Avril. I think I would have loved to have been an English major, but my (decades-ago) academic background is in political philosophy, with dabblings in anthropology and religious studies. I suppose this newly intensified craving for beautiful words is a midlife thing for me (...just like the gardening). Thanks for the tip on Andrea Barrett--I will chase down "Ship Fever" tout de suite.