Wallflowers: Poetry Response

August 29th, 2010

Wallflowers

I heard a word today I'd never heard before-
I wondered where it had been all my life.
I welcomed it, wooed it with my pen,
let it know it was loved.

They say if you use a word three times, it's yours.
What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Do they wait bitterly,
hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,
longing for someone to say,
"yes, you . . . you're the one"?

Or do they wait patiently, shy shadows
at the high school dance,
knowing that, given the slightest chance,
someday they'll bloom?

I want to make room for all of them,
to be the Ellis Island of diction-
give me your tired, your poor,
your gegenshein, your zoanthropy-
all those words without a home,
come out and play - live in my poem.
                                                            -Donna Vorreyer

Wallfowers:  " . . . herbs from the genus of Erysium of the mustard family . . ." www.freedictionary.com
Dickensian: "Of or like the novels of Charles Dickens (especially with regard to the poor social and economical conditions)." wordnetweb.princeton.edu
Ellis Island: Symbol of American immigrants, an island just off Manhattan that allows immigrants to stay. www.ellisisland.org
Gegenshein: " . . a faint spot of light in the night sky that appears directly opposite the position of the sun." wordnetweb.princeton.edu
Zoanthropy: " . . delusion that you have assumed the form of an animal." wordnetweb.princeton.edu

The first thing I had too do to respond to this poem was discover the definitions of some of the words. The five listed above were the words I had lack of knowledge on, if there are any others, let me know!

Doona Vorreyer lives in the Chicago area and works as a middle school teacher and a poet. Her work has been published in many journals and magazines, including New York Quarterly, Cider Press Review, Autumn Sky Poetry, Boxcar Poetry Review, Flashquake, Chantarelle's Notebook, After Hours, Ghoti, DMQ Review, Fickle Muse, and Apparatus Magazine. This is just to know the author, but I do not believe any of this information will help in understanding this poem, so moving on!

The over all message of this poem is fairly simple, Vorreyer is questioning the place in which words that are not used live. If they are "hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms," or "shy shadows at the high school dance." This concludes with a place for all of them to go, in her poem. What is fascinating about this poem is the vivid descriptions of unused words. Since the concept is easy to grasp, the descriptions and word choice really allows the poem to bloom. For an example, take stanza three. Dickensian, meaning, in this case, poor social condition, the reader can see long, extraordinary, unused words, hollow-eyed and longing used. And again in the last stanza, stanza five. The Ellis Island can be seen as an island that takes in immigrants for access to America. Verryer wants to be the place where all the words no one speaks can go and be put into poems. She even gives examples of these words, gegenshein and zoanthropy. Unless the reader studies astronomy and mental conditions, they are clueless as to what theses words are, really giving the sense of all the words unspoken in the world.

This poem was also encouraging, The splendid descriptions make the reader feel guilty that these words are not flowing off their tongues every once in a while. So her poem, in a sense, is a call to action. It is telling readers to hunt down and adopt the neglected words of today.