Two Flowers

The spoken word, depending on the orator, can produce wide-ranging effects and emotions in a listener. Likewise, the written word, whether a story, an autobiography, an historical account, or even a fortune cookie, can also impress upon its reader innumerable feelings. This impact, the work's influence, is not only due to content but relies, sometimes subtly and other times overtly, on the arrangement of the subject matter and thus how the material is presented to you, its audience.

    Poetry, therefore, can be said to have a visual aesthetic - how a poem "appears" on a 'page' to the reader can affect the apprehension and appreciation of that work's content. A written work's page-layout and line-breaks, meant to emphasize pacing, rhymes, alliteration, and/or emotions (between sentences and stanzas and chapters), can do, and mean, more than just the arbitrary display of text and subject matter - it can be intentionally designed by its author to affect the reader. In the same manner artwork can evoke a certain sense of place or of time or maturity, so too can an author's choice of words and sentence length.

    With this in mind, the unique settings available to you on your digital reading device (for font size and color, and such other controls that can alter the presentation of a 'page of text') presents a daring challenge to poets, and to publishers of poetry, in the digital age. The poems we publish, by working closely with the author, are presented digitally in a line-and-page manner that strives to preserve the author's intent, as best as is possible, through a variety of font, color, page, and device formats. Please realize that the enjoyment and appreciation of a written work, particularly a structured poem, can be changed simply by changing the settings of your reader.

    Two Flowers is a poem exploring how two people view a pair of flowers, presented in 8 stanzas of 5 lines each. From the point of view of a single participant, marigolds and gladiolas reveal the mysteries of how each may view the other and, ultimately, the perfect yin and yang of their relationship. This non-rhyming poem has each stanza presented in chapters of 2 lines on a page, 1 line on the next page, and finishing that chapter with the last 2 lines, for a total of 8 chapters each having 3 pages. A final, single line of a 9th chapter symbolizes their ongoing commitment and companionship as 'two flowers' traveling together through life. For an optimal reading experience, I do request you set your device so that as many as is possible of the following letters appear on a single line.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R

Please enjoy, and thank you!