This is a very full poem, yet comprises only six words – two of them repeated! And there’s still room for deep silence, colour and movement.

Masterful.

Nicely observed, Mark. Yes, that does appear to be the case.

A party in the setting of the garden, and the garden.

The various theories/approaches, speculations and interpretations (all interesting, or illuminating or at least entertaining, at least for a while) of the poem, and the poem.

Whatever we might think about gardens as opposed to the wild, the garden was there before the garden party (how else could there be a garden party held?) and remains after the party is over, more or less intact, though the petunias might have been trampled and the cherry branches near the barbeque be a bit singed.

(and the garden is still there the next day whether the party-goers have hangovers or not. )

A garden, in my mind, is a more likely metaphor for poetry than the wild. It is, like poetry, a ‘cultivated’ thing. Fashions in gardens change, different plants suit different climates, different philosophies of gardening have their day, the emphasis might be on edibles or on aesthetic values, but we still call everything from a grand-scale Botanical Garden to the rather haphazardly planted, small space in eg in my backyard a garden.

Hooray for gardens! Without which, no garden parties

cheers,

lorin

Ruth has long shown the eye of a naturalist paired with the skill of a wordsmith.

I react to this poem as an almost sardonic “author’s message” — very sotto voce — about the lack on sensitivity to the garden by many of the party goers. The garden was a charming place to hold the party, a set, a backdrop like a painted scrim. After the party… the poet/observer is left to contemplate and observe the garden.

Additionally, gardens themselves are fake arrangements of “nature” as we have been discussing in Peter’s latest Sails. Gardens are managed “nature.” Very stylized in some cases… certainly so in British-style landscape gardens and also so-called Japanese gardens — Temple Gardens. An ordinary formal garden in the US has flowering plants, shrubs, trees, perhaps fish in a water feature. Still . . . even planned and tended, shaped and manicured, the living things find a way. Bees fly in, butterflies, and even the mosquitoes as someone mentioned. Earthworms and slugs might survive the chemical onslaught. Stray acorns may germinate and “volunteer” flowers escape the weeder.

I am reminded of a friend who told me he had driven through The Grand Tetons (USA National Park) in Wyoming. As he passed, he and his family thought it was a fine display of mountains. Period. I stopped (actually for several nights) and hiked a little with my wife. Took several kinds of water trips, including a mostly tame raft trip. As we climbed between the great peaks (still fairly easy hiking) and saw the alpine wild flowers below the glaciers, and noticed the wind-combed clouds clinging in the lee of the Grand Teton . . . I felt something of the Rockies’ legendary power and grandeur. That wild “garden” had eagles and osprey, moose and deer; and beaver and trout. The sun set behind the peaks giving proof to the song lyric about purple mountain’s majesty.

Some of Ruth’s garden party folk, I leap to assume, watched through the car window at 45 mph. After the group had left, the poet sat and listened, even to that patch of stylized “Nature.”

and how interesting, John, that this was the poem that spontaneously first arrived to you in response to this forum.

Your insightful closing comments move me to this:

after the virtual party the virtual

and whooooaaaa, what a different place/places I am left in:

Ruth’s garden, whether it is gloriously bathed in soft light and fragrance, or swarming with mosquitoes, creates a shared context for those who have gathered.
The garden at the end of the poem holds what has happened there and continues.
For me, despite the ease of “connecting” electronically, and all it has offered us in increased communication,
the illuminated screen does not hold us in quite the same way
the garden does.

This haiku by Ruth Yarrow leads me, by way of contrasts, into quietude. Gardens can be utopian. We tailor our small corner of the world (if we can call it ours) to reflect our vision of harmony, whatever that might be. Not anything as grand as nature or perfection. For me, after the garden party/ the garden is about coming home to a secret place that is never quite found but is there somewhere, and precious.