Lantana Camara, Spreading Sunset
I bought you, lantana plant,
because you are drought tolerant—
or is it drought resistant? I forget.
Your pointed label reads SATISFYING
The defiant flames of your gold and orange
clusters force me to stare
Looking ahead, I wager that your five pound
maturity can handle neglect
Lantana camara, HARDY, INDIGENOUS, INVASIVE.
Spreading Sunset, you grow on me.
I knew I would leave, doubtful
the occupants after me would stop to stoke
your star-like blooms
or lean closer to attend each berry,
red, purple, charred rippled black
ripening toward poison,
changing colors with mood
Renters' sandals slap their beat
on painted gray planks and
drown out your quiet
restless offerings
Vacation a mere week—they almost water you,
the drought-tolerant plant right there on the steps
I knew all this but I bought you anyway
placing my momentary pleasure
above your very existence
Sunsets spread, spread, gold and orange
I return to your blooms, paper ashes
Your leaves clench against the heat.
I try to revive stalky ugliness but your hardened
roots reject my water offering.
No longer a sprawling potted plant, you have become
something a car would whiz by
or a mower would run over.
Lantana camara, spreading sunset.
Next morning I kneel and water again
you cautiously begin to unfasten.
Fruit and bloom are silent, but your leaves—
Were they always so cilia-soft to touch?
Veins like roadmaps stretch out, no longer cloistered
they accept drops of sun offering
As if to say, "I don't care what you think."
Copyright 2009 by Delia Corrigan
Critique by Jendi Reiter
I chose this month's poem, Delia Corrigan's "Lantana Camara, Spreading Sunset", because it illustrates poetry's gift for exploring the universal through the particular. A good poem can devote itself to a small object or event, and by looking at it more closely than we do in everyday life, reveal something of broader significance about human nature. Some examples are Theodore Roethke's "The Geranium" and Stephen Dobyns' "Indifference to Consequence". The poem shows the fractal qualities of its subject matter, replicating in miniature our higher-level patterns of interaction.
Occasionally, Corrigan's poem lapses into an overly colloquial or prosy voice, which is a common problem for contemporary writers of narrative free verse. These "off" notes are most noticeable in her opening and closing stanzas. While I think "Lantana Camara" needs a bit more work before it's ready for professional publication, I decided to feature it in the newsletter because the descriptions of the plant and the woman's evolving relationship to it are so vivid and well-observed, containing complex shifts of emotion in the space of a few lines.
Through the narrator's decision to purchase a plant for her temporary lodgings, we are invited to consider the anonymity and transience of our interactions with others in this highly mobile society, and how this situation can make us selfish. The narrator wants to believe the puffery on the plant's label ("HARDY, INDIGENOUS, INVASIVE") because it relieves her of responsibility for taking care of the plant she's picked out for her short-term enjoyment. She doesn't bother learning whether the lantana is "drought tolerant" or "drought resistant", or if there's a meaningful difference. Quotes from advertising can be an effective way to inject dramatic irony into a poem, since ad-speak tries to force words into a single unambiguously positive meaning, while poetry is about teasing out the ambiguities and unlikely associations between words.
Here, it's ironic that the plant's "pointed label reads SATISFYING" since whatever satisfaction she gets from the plant will be short-lived because of her own plans to move away. "Satisfying" is a word we see on a lot of product labels (not to mention Snickers' unintentionally gross-sounding variation "satisfectellent") although economic logic dictates that the product not satisfy for very long, otherwise we wouldn't need to buy more.
This habitual discontent comes through in the narrator's description of how she and the other occupants of the house are constantly on the move. Their lifestyle works against the tranquil and appreciative state of mind that would let them nurture a specific place and its nonhuman inhabitants: "I knew I would leave, doubtful/the occupants after me would stop to stoke/your star-like blooms", she writes, and later: "Renters' sandals slap their beat/on painted gray planks and/drown out your quiet/restless offerings". The combination of sandals, quiet, and "offerings" made me think of the atmosphere of a monastery, an association that's strengthened by the word "cloistered" later in the poem. The lantana, which has to grow where it's planted, simply devotes itself to existing and making the best of its surroundings, while the humans are rushing around to satisfy their temporary cravings.
The plant's quiet perseverance awakens the narrator's ethical sense. She feels remorse that she's treated the plant as an object for her enjoyment and not as a fellow living thing: "I knew all this but I bought you anyway/placing my momentary pleasure/above your very existence". Corrigan made the right choice in writing this poem as an address to the plant, not a narrative about the plant. If the "you" were replaced by an impersonal "it" or a sentimentally anthropomorphized "she", the poem would miss the chance to have the form reinforce the content, namely the passage from self-centeredness to relationship.
I thought the beginning of the poem was too weak, undercutting the authority of the speaker's voice before it had a chance to establish itself: "you are drought tolerant—/or is it drought resistant? I forget." Since we already know from the title that the poem is about a lantana, and we learn later on that it is drought-tolerant, it would be all right to open with a revised version of the second stanza:
The defiant flames of your gold and orange
clusters force me to stare
Your pointed label reads SATISFYING
Looking ahead, I wager that your five pound
maturity can handle neglect
Lantana camara, HARDY, INDIGENOUS, INVASIVE.
Spreading Sunset, you grow on me.
...
The other part that I would revise is the ending. "I don't care what you think" was too trivial a phrase to sum up the beautiful imagery and serious self-exploration that preceded it. It also seemed to contradict the lessons of compassion and interdependence that the rest of the poem teaches. What would the lantana really say, if it could talk? I don't think it would be this hostile. "I will survive"? "Grow where you're planted"? (Not that I would want to see either of these cliché phrases in the poem.) Actually, I don't want the lantana to speak at all, even in the narrator's mind. Its otherness, its nonhuman quality, has been necessary to expand her moral imagination. By not speaking or moving, it made space for her to examine her own thoughts and actions.
The poem could end by reversing the two penultimate lines to end on the stronger one: "they accept drops of sun offering/Veins like roadmaps stretch out, no longer cloistered." Since the word "offering" occurs three times in the poem, this might be a place to take it out, ending the line at "drops of sun". The travel imagery suggests that the plant has also been transformed by the interaction, taking on some of the narrator's energetic and adventurous qualities while she in turn has taken on some of its stillness.
Where could a poem like "Lantana Camara, Spreading Sunset" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Society of Texas Annual Contests
Entries must be received by August 15
Prizes up to $450 for unpublished poems in 100 different categories (some are members-only); no simultaneous submissions
Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by September 1
Prizes up to $1,000 for narrative poetry, from a new literary journal based in Western Massachusetts; enter online only
White Mice Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: October 15
This $200 prize for poems on an annual theme (2009 is "Renewal") is sponsored by the Lawrence Durrell Society; Durrell was a 20th-century novelist who wrote The Alexandria Quartet
This poem and critique appeared in the July 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Categories: Poetry Critiques
