“Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meager flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,”
The author’s use of diction here is a clear indicator of how the sea rose may look through a picture. It seems H.D starred either found a sea rose and described it, and focused on its dying presence. H.D does little to usurp the reader’s captive senses, strictly appealing to one visual image. The moment in line three describing the meager flower and its thinness gives the poem a tangible depiction of the veracity of a sea rose. This is a clear example of H.D unsophisticated style which lacks creativity and hindered by its direct nature. Hilda Doolittle used poetry to depict her vision of reality. The poem has many cacophonous sounding words, like harsh, meager, sparse, stint of petals, sparse of leaf, stunted. The choice of diction, filled with adjectives, illustrates a beat up old rose. There can be more than one meaning or connotation to a rose. Roses not only represent, love but can also represent a love scorned. While this poem exemplifies H.D’s imagist style and evokes the reader’s curiosity. The reader is left with a feeling of uncertainty, “Can the spice-rose drip suck acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?” The poems ambiguous ending provokes a need for dissecting the poem further. Is the sea rose just a rose like any other? Ezra Pound stated that a sea rose is “complex of emotion” and H.D stated a sea rose is “more precious than a wet rose.” Roses seemingly are filled with many connotations. If H.D contrived some type of situation or story to her poem perhaps the rose could be more representative as a non-traditional symbol, symbolizing the antithesis of a symbol of love, instead of ambiguity.
While H.D’s poem the “Sea Rose” uses strictly cacophonous tones, Dorothy Parker’s ability to integrate inimitable tones throughout her piece helps visualize the story of “One Perfect Rose.” This three quatrain poem in its first stanza has a very euphonious tone:
“A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose”
Diction is a pertinent part of tone and the specific word choice of Parker indicates that her initial reaction that she wanted to evoke from her reader was a poem that came across with a soft, euphonious tone that adhered to love via the rose in its most traditional meaning. The tone continues through the second stanza with smooth vowel sounds, while the first stanza emphasized vowel sounds like “eee” the second stanza uses “ooo” sound to transition into a third stanza that is not completely euphonious but disrupted with specific diction like the word “limousine” and devices like enjambment in line nine and ten.
“Why is it no one ever sent me yet
On perfect limousine, do you suppose?”
The use of assonance allows the poem to flow smoothly and until the third stanza where the tone changes as the Parker uses sarcasm and pessimism to mock the rose as a symbol of love. Parker’s ability to use multiple dimensions to change tone makes her writing style much more effective than simple use of adjectives that H.D uses in the “Sea Rose.” Tone is critical to capturing the reader’s attention and through Parkers ability to use assonance and device like enjambment (9-12) Parker can manipulate tone to enlighten and impose her particular view.
Dorothy Parkers “One Perfect Rose” is the perfect blend of dictions and poetic devices that helps it create a more vivid representation of a rose not being just a rose. The first two stanzas of the poem follow the traditional symbolism of the rose and uses end rhyme to reinforce the euphonic tone, which is reiterated by words like tenderly, pure, scented, dew, wet and words with soft vowel sounds. A rose can be more than just a symbol of love; a rose can be a symbol of pain, superficiality and idealism. Parker’s use of diction is chosen to tell a story of women perhaps frustrated by the symbol of a rose. This frustration is apparent in line nine through twelve, “Why is it no one ever sent me yet, / One perfect limousine, do you suppose? / Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get/ One perfect rose.”
Dorothy Parker's three quatrain poem, “One Perfect Rose” written in 1923 was one of many poems helped many present-day scholars learn the accessibility of Parkers poetic works. Parker employed a strategy similar to the “bait-and-switch,” which exemplified that specific era of poetry in the Roaring Twenties. The first two stanzas lull us to a comfortable place of serenity as the poem in the first 6 lines uses “perfect “iambic pentameter, addressing the rose a “perfect” perhaps referring to a roses conventional meaning for “love.” Each stanza ends with repeating line “One perfect Rose,” which has contains three heavy stresses and one easy stress. What this creates is an interruption of sound that captures a reader’s attention to the symbolic rose but also explains why the conventional symbolism of a rose may possibly be disrupted. What is eluded in the first two stanzas becomes candid as the third stanza; the calm tone is continued but broken, as “One perfect limousine” becomes equal to or preferable to the rose. Meaning the rose is suggestive of materialism not emotions. Roses in this context suggest that money substitutes the rose from its customary connotation. Is the author addressing a perspective of a self absorbed snob, or are we viewing the mannerisms of women in the 1920’s who were trapped underneath a “glass-ceiling” of the times. Where the only way women could advance themselves was through marriage. Parker was an author of the time that wrote about the collision of the predictable definition of romance with today’s definition of modern love. Love in its purest form in the era was very difficult to find and Parker suggests through skepticism that the speaker of the poem is more likely to select a wealth over romance, due to its practicality Dorothy Parkers poetry is indicative of modernism’s radical nature, but also shows a collision of sentimental and modernist literary and cultural values.
Likewise in H.D’s poem the Sea Rose, female sexuality is encoded in metaphor. In a traditional reading the sea rose in comparison to the reddest rose is by far much harsher. In contrast, the poet negates the stereotypical sentimentality of sweet love and softness in defense of the ‘other.’ This is especially noticeable in the repeated motifs of “harsh rose, wet rose and spice-rose.” H.D. symbolically evokes the dichotomy of a disparate femininity, for example ‘wild as opposed to sweet, unlovely as opposed to lovely.’ The “Sea Rose” discards conventional femininity to privilege explosive sexuality.
To compare and contrast these poets who both use the symbol of the rose is to compare oranges to apples. While H.D uses adjective-fashioned diction to create an image of a rose beaten by the elements at the sea, Dorothy Parker narrated a story throughout her work. Both use imagery to develop justification for why a rose is not just a rose. But Dorothy Parker ability to use simple poetic devices, like end rhyme, enjambment and assonance makes her imagery much easier to visualize for readers. Parker’s narrative style is conducive for a reader to easily see rose as a central focal point and visual an object with an insightful story or situation. In contrast, listing descriptive adjectives as H.D did in the “Sea Rose” does not necessarily portray rose as anything but a rose. While both use imagery to develop justification for why a rose is not just a rose, the complexity of human emotion can only be portrayed through narration not description. H.D’s inability to tell a story caused the poem to lack meaning in terms of meaning with an image. On the other hand Parker’s poem “One Perfect Rose” allows the reader to see that all roses are not traditionally symbolic of love, life and eternity.