Flowers have been used as symbols for many years, in literature, in music, in dance and even in everyday life, to represent condolences, sorrow, joy, love and all kinds of affection. It is, then, no surprise that they have made such an impact in modern poetry, becoming all kinds of metaphors, similes and imagery as they are adapted and manipulate for all sorts of literary purposes, including being stripped of all previous metaphorical significance. Yeats' famous collection of poetry, The Rose, takes one of the most famous floral symbols and adapts it in many differing and complex ways, sometimes using its simple romantic connotations to further his own poetic motives and other times destroying them completely in order to use the rose as a new kind of symbol, freed of its original, sentimental attachments. Gertrude Stein's most famous quote, 'a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose', taken from her poem Sacred Emily, seems to be part of her desire to de-familiarise the historical gravity of words, to detach words from traditional connotative meanings and giving them new ones, breaking them back into syllables and simple sounds in order to 'restore' language itself. The heavily imbued and very much overused symbol of the rose seems the perfect emblem with which to begin. Other poets, however, chose to exploit the idea of the rose, in its romantic terms, exacerbating its place in sentimental culture, for example Robert Burns' most famous work: My Love is like a Red, Red Rose.
It is not only the rose that has been used as a poetic symbol in our time, though the rose is possibly the most prominent example of a flower accumulating cultural and poetic significance. Sylvia Plath's most celebrated poetic offering, Ariel, contains the well known poem, Tulips, where the flower becomes a complex symbol for many emotions and incongruence's present within the poem. The tradition of giving flowers to hospital patients as an act of kindness is reversed, as Plath plunges the seemingly harmless gesture into negativity, imbuing the simple flowers with a sinister gloom. The poppy, of course, is a prominent symbol in much war poetry, signifying blood and death but also resolve and peace as the simple flowers covered the redundant battle fields when the fighting was finally over. The poppy has become one of the most powerful floral symbols of our time as a result, not only in poetry but every year in November as paper poppies are adorned in plain remembrance of the war dead.
Whatever the poetic resonance of the gesture, flowers have remained a classic gift and a timeless symbol of affection, good wishes and love and have become so ingrained in popular culture that they are now available in high street stores and local supermarkets and on websites like Interflora. It seems that the everyday importance of the flower will be just as lasting as the flower's more poetic and romantic significance, which makes them the ideal gift for those with Romantic sensibilities this Valentine's Day.

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Article Submitted By: Ramond Verde8
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