rock rose
Remedies against terrorism
can’t look down
From this chalk brink.
listen while clinging
To the wide sea
where do you search
Cliffs are soft or thin.
holly
Cure for hatred and jealousy
I am an expert in subtle desires.
I can sew blood threads.
You see, I can’t love.
My dark green heart is of no use.
Always bringing up the same old bad luck stories…
Please don’t cry or I’ll scratch your eyes out.
common centaury
Cure for those who are too selfless
all summer long
I acquiesce –
monotonous work
red and pink.
what my flowers make
The grass sings!
I’m just happy
When I say yes.
wild balsam
cure for impatience
took a short shift
abandoned by motherhood
Children from me.
Who would have that little bud
On your feet all day?
I would like to think about it and work on it.
I want to do something about my inconvenient life.
Spectacular fever.
Edward Buck was a physician who advocated homeopathy. His so-called “cures” were derived from energy patterns that he believed corresponded between certain plants and emotional disorders affecting human health. Although he died in 1936, his 38 different Bachflower remedies are still big business.
Many people disagree with Bach, calling into question those who swallow the cure in a state of serious faith. Trick or treating? In “Alternative Medicine in Trials,” Simon Singh and Ezzard Ernst conduct an in-depth investigation of complementary medicine and find that all trials of flower remedies show that “this approach exceeds placebos in curing disease and relieving symptoms.” It has been shown to be effective.”
Catherine Towers has almost certainly turned bad science into fun art. Her series of 14 flower remedies form the second part of her new three-part collection ‘The Remedies’, which was shortlisted for this year’s TS Eliot Prize. Each of the poems in the series is narrated by a plant, imagining the plant suffering from the symptoms it serves as a cure. It is a clever application of homeopathic principles. I chose her four from the series: Rock Rose, Holly, Common Centaury, and Wild Balsam. She is ranked 8th, 9th, 11th, and 14th in the order of publication.
The aphoristic brevity and sharply casual tone recall Joe Shapcott’s Rose Poems, a response to Rilke’s Rose series. Although Shapcott, like Towers, did not give the rose a voice, he used the stereotype of the flower as a female reproductive organ to question that very stereotype. The wildflowers in Towers’ Remedies series are not overtly female, but their vocabulary gives us hints of their cuteness. Aspen “raises a delicate hysteria” (aspen) and “clings” to the rocky, threatening cliff. Many of the psychological conditions that are being improved are emotional disorders traditionally associated with femininity. “Too selfless” (Common Centauri), and definitely dreams too much (Clematis).
Since I’m impatient myself, I’ll start with the last poem in the series. Wild balsam (impatiens) gave me a thrill of self-awareness. It also inspired me to reread Anne Stevenson’s Himalayan Balsam, a sweet and precise botanical study. I first encountered Stevenson’s poetry many years ago when I was living in Belfast. The poem helped me identify a strange plant growing in abundance outside my back gate. When you visit the website Maurice Rutherford’s Poetry Garden, you can enjoy a proper sister work, Gillian Clarke’s Balsam, Himalayan His Balsam.
In Towers’ Wild Balsam, the gender of the speaker is boldly foregrounded. “I despised motherhood and abandoned my children.” This may not be just a short-tempered personality, but a declaration of shameless infanticide, a manifestation of Medea’s personality. The implied act of “kicked my children away from me” is almost heroic in its ruthlessness. This mimics the plant’s behavior known as “explosive dehiscence”, which is where the Latin name impatiens comes from. This wonderful little monologue is made all the more disturbing because it is voiced by a mother who is clearly suffering from more than just impatience.
Rock Rose is under threat from an outside force, which is unusual in this sequence. The “big sea” is distant but potentially destructive, and if it enters a weak spot on the cliff, the thin-stemmed flowers will fall with it. As always, there were no wasted words, no exaggerations. The minimalism that evokes the “horror” of flowers is appropriate and dignified.
Holly’s character suggests the pathology of an abuser-turned-abuser, unable to give or receive anything but pain. That her voice seems strained through a sieve of aphonic spits and hisses. Holly berries traditionally symbolize the blood of Christ, but here there is no berry image representing the potential for new growth to emerge from wounds. The concept of red is reduced to a “thread of blood”. Jealousy isn’t just green, it’s “dark green.” Its violent potential emerges in the final line. Tough honesty might have been a relief, but it is replaced by the threat of an ancient and particularly barbaric form of retribution.
In contrast, Common Centaur’s “red” is modified by blue and blended into “pink” with its feminine associations. The speaker doesn’t feel bad, in fact, it seems like he’s having fun. She may be the flower equivalent of an angel in the house, but there’s no obvious hidden grudge or air of bitter martyrdom. She would be happy without fixing her selflessness. Perhaps this poem is a quiet argument against the secular tendency to affirm selfishness and pathologize selflessness. By offering extreme models of power relations, Common Centaur and Wild Balsam hint at a larger moral conflict between private and public responsibility, artistic responsibility and social responsibility.
But what about scientific responsibility? This poem is not intended to promote or question Edward Bach’s therapy. They may be offering an alternative understanding of themselves by bringing psychological states back into their minds and revealing them through the filter of plant characteristics.
The flower people of the Towers are allegorical. They express difficult emotions, are complex and troubled, and are “stupid just like the rest of us.” They vent their feelings and self-criticism openly and innocently, as if no one was criticizing them and only a kind psychotherapist was listening. Their seemingly frank attitude is guaranteed by the precision of their words and carefully captured colloquial idioms, rather than slang or psychological chatter. For those frustrated by poetry awards, these flower remedies are a palatable, refreshing tonic.
