“The rose is obsolete” (1923)
William Carlos Williams
The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air – The edge
cuts without cutting
meets – nothing – renews
itself in metal or porcelain –
whither? It ends –
But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry –
Shaper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica –
the broken plate
glazed with a rose
Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses –
The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end – of roses
It is at the edge of the
Petal that love waits
Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness – fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching
What
The place between the petal’s
edge and the
From the petal’s edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact – lifting
from it – neither hanging
nor pushing –
The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space
William Carlos Williams’ poem, “The rose is obsolete” may read a bit confusing at first. This is because much of the poem can be read as a giant metaphor. (Really surprising for a poem, eh?) The speaker of the poem describes how the rose, which in reality is simply a flower, has been construed to be so much more than what it really is. Beautiful? Yes. Smells good? Some may think so. However, a rose is not love. Love is love. The speaker states that the “rose carried weight of love/ but love is at an end – of roses.” Roses have been painted on pottery such as “majolica,” roses have been replicated in materials in order to last forever, and roses have definitely been a way for members of a relationship to say “I’m sorry” or “I want to get laid tonight.”
As Gertrude Stein (a friend of Williams) said, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” It is not love. Unlike a rose, love is not something we can hold in our hands. It is not something that can actually die (and I mean really die, not just end after you go away to different schools). It is not something that can be neatly arranged into a glass vase and watered every day. However, it has almost become second nature for us to associate roses with love. Why is this?
One theory is that we, as humans, “love” to put everything into nice little solid terms. We like to place what we really feel into something that is easy to take and simple to manage. Why can’t we just say what we really feel? Why can’t we give love instead of roses in order to say, “I’m sorry”?
William Carlos Williams’ poem makes me think about how, for most of us, it can be really difficult sometimes to say what we mean. We become so afraid of the response or the result that we choose to take the risk away and say something pleasing. Pleasing people is easy, right? It’s not just always with complicated manners such as love. Many of us can’t even tell our friends that the dress she’s wearing makes her pimple look especially red and big. We just tell her it looks great and avoid the truth. Or even when a coworker asks us to cover a shift—we don’t say, “no, I just want to get drunk that night.” We say, “Sorry dude, I got a concert that I can’t miss” (even when we don’t).
I think it’s time to make a change. I believe, or at least I’ve been told, that I too often say what’s on my mind. I know this can often make for an awkward conversation, as I’ve experienced in far too many situations, but I just have a difficult time hiding the truth. Sometimes it’s just too straining to attempt to squeeze all of love into that tiny red rose. Perhaps we should hold back the terrifying truth when it is absolutely necessary, but why don’t we just start saying what we mean? It might be messy, it might be complicated, it might get you punched in the face, but at least it’s the truth.
