Brooks, Gwendolyn : sick man looks at flowers

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Depression, Disease and Health, Hospitalization, Loneliness, Pain, Suffering
Summary	This short poem, one of a series entitled "A Catch of Shy Fish," describes an old sick man whose life is "closing in" and who feels only pain ("mind is a little isle") until there enters "an impudence of red," flowers that, for him become a "ripe rebuke," a "burgeoning affluence" that "mocks [him] and "mocks the desert of my bed."
Commentary	With remarkable economy (the poem has 7 lines), the speaker gets at the isolation and loneliness that pain causes and the difficulty of a sick (and presumably dying) person who is confronted with life and color. This poem would be useful paired with Sylvia Plath’s Tulips, a poem about an adult who is recovering from surgery and is angry when the isolation of her pain is jarred by a vase of red tulips. The question of caring for sick and recovering people (and their sometimes puzzling resentment) can be profitably discussed using these poems.
Source	Blacks
Publisher	The David Company
Edition	1987
Place Published	Chicago
Alternate Source	The Bean Eaters
Alternate Publisher	Harper & Row
Alternate Edition	1960
Place Published	New York
Miscellaneous	The David Company’s address is: P.O. Box 19355, Chicago, IL 60619.
Annotated by	Stanford, Ann Folwell
Date of Entry	09/16/97
Last Revised	01/16/98