Language Chosen to Show Different Attitudes
Donald Justice is often referred to as the poet’s poet. This title refers to the fact that many poets know and respect his work, many of them having had him as their teacher, but few critics pay much attention to his work because he does not draw the attention of a large, general audience. Although they have won many prestigious awards, his published works are few. He is, in other words, a poet who cherishes quality over quantity. He concentrates on the specifics, carefully choosing his words, filling each one with as much meaning as possible, and then saying no more. And although his words carry much weight, they do not feel heavy. They feel quite ordinary, as a matter of fact. They feel so ordinary that the art behind them, the carefully constructed picture they display, the economy with which the few words say so much in so little time is almost lost if the poem is read only once. To do justice to Justice’s work, his poems should be read several times. They should be as read as slowly as the slow, sure pace of Death in Justice’s poem “Incident in a Rose Garden.” In “Incident in a Rose Garden,” Justice has placed three voices: the Gardener, the Master, and Death, in juxtaposition with one another. The Gardener, the most humble of the three voices, begins the poem with the word “Sir.” He is addressing his Master, although the reader does not know this until later. But, by the use of the word “Sir,” the reader is immediately confronted with the concept of hierarchy. The Gardener is using very polite language, and he is probably talking to someone he considers of higher rank than himself. He quickly moves past this first word, having completed the required social convention, and by the end of the first line, the Gardener’s heart is beating fast out of fear. He has, after all, just encountered Death. Justice writes this first line in language that is clear and simple. He grabs the attention of his readers just as Death has grabbed the attention of the Gardener. Justice is not writing in obscure metaphor or allusion. There is no mistaking that the Gardener has “encountered Death.” This being said, the poem moves on. The second line of this poem conjures up memories of one of the most often quoted first stanzas of poetry ever written. The stanza comes from Robert Herrick (1591–1674). The poem is titled “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.” The lines go like this:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may Old Time is still a-flying And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.
Justice appears to have been thinking about Herrick’s poem, for he has set his own poem in a rose garden. By doing this and without having to say anything more, Justice puts this well-established image of the rose as the symbol of life right in the face of his readers. He has stated the entire theme of his poem in two lines: the fear of death and the transitory nature of life. But the poem, of course, does not end here. Justice has much more to say. Next, the poem goes into a description of death. It is through the description that the reader feels the racing heart of the Gardener. He is excited by the experience but not to the point of wordlessness. The phrase “Thin as a scythe” is as sharp and as threatening as a well-honed butcher’s blade. But it is interesting to note that the Gardener recognizes Death not...
(This entire section contains 1835 words.)
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through a personal reference but rather through a picture he has seen. This removes the Gardener, at least by one step, from personal knowing. By distancing the Gardener in this way, Justice makes the Gardener somewhat less mesmerized by Death. He creates the idea, in a very well-planned way, that the Gardener has not known anyone who has died. The Gardener has not really witnessed mortality. As a matter of fact, Justice makes it sound as if this might be the Gardener’s first encounter, and although it frightens him, it does not immobilize him. Instead, the Gardener’s confrontation with Death has given him an instant epiphany of understanding: he does not want to waste any more time. The difference between the picture of Death that the Gardener has seen and the image that stands before him is that Death has opened his mouth. And it is in the opening of his mouth that the Gardener sees something he had not seen in the picture: Death’s mouth is big “with white teeth.” Because Death is dressed all in black, these white teeth must stand out. Having Death open his big mouth and show his teeth is reminiscent of the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” saying, “The better to eat you with.” This is no quiet picture, and neither is it a fairy tale. This is the real thing. This Death has teeth, and the Gardener is not sticking around to find out who Death is looking for. With this thought, the Gardener then again politely addresses his Master: “Sir, I am quitting my job.” And again, Justice seems to be referring back to Herrick’scarpe diem (“seize the day”) poem, for the Gardener no longer worries about his job; all he wants is to leave. He wants to do the things that he has been putting off, things that he thought he would always have time for later. And then with a little hint of comedy, Justice writes that the Gardener not only wants to see his sons, but he also wants to see California—America’s version of the mythological Garden of Paradise. With the departure of the Gardener, the first half of Justice’s poem is complete. And in the next line, once again the word “Sir” is used; only this time it is spoken by the Master, and it is spoken in a voice quite a bit less humble than the Gardener’s. The Master is, after all, the master. He is the master of the Gardener and the Garden itself. These are his roses (although earlier the Gardener referred to the flowers as “our roses,” using this phrase to imply that he was as protective and caring of them as the Master was—except when it was time for the Gardener to make a neat and abrupt departure to save his own skin). “This is my property, sir,” the Master tells Death, and you are not welcome. Why is Death not welcome here? Because he is a “stranger.” How unfortunate for the Master that he does not recognize Death. Not only does he not recognize Death, he disbelieves his own gardener’s recognition. What could a gardener know? He is merely a superstitious fool who is easily spooked. And Justice says all this in such few words. How does he do it? One thing that Justice does is create a tone of voice that is filled with obvious psychological implications. For instance, the tone of his words gives away the psychology of the Master. “You must be that stranger,” he says. He does not ask, “Who are you?” Neither does he ask anything else of him. Instead, he attempts to tell Death who he is, and he does this in a tone of admonishment: not only are you a stranger but you have “threatened my [note the possessive pronoun] gardener.” Then the Master more or less points out the no trespassing signs that he has posted around the periphery of his private estate, saying, “I welcome only friends here.” There is a guest list implied here. This is a private club, and no one enters without the Master’s permission. All this Justice says in four lines. Now for the climax: Death also begins his part of this poem with the word “Sir.” But here Death mocks not only humility but also the Master. Death knows who the real Master is, even if the Master is ignorant of his place in life’s hierarchy. Death mocks the Master first with the honorific salutation; then he mocks him by turning the Master’s list of friends on its proverbial head. I was a friend of your father’s, Death states. “We were friends,” he says, but then cleverly adds, “at the end.” Here Justice makes several points: First he has Death put the Master in his place. This Master might own the garden, and he might have the right to keep anyone he chooses outside its gates, but he cannot avoid facing Death. And by using the phrase “at the end,” Justice is also, in three little words, exposing the identity of Death to the Master. Another interesting thing that is going on here is that this so-called Master, who has witnessed the death of his father, does not recognize Death. Why is that, and what is Justice saying here? Whereas the Gardener immediately recognized Death and found a way to escape, stating that he has more to do with his life and is not ready to face him, the Master is clueless. Where was the Master when his father died? Is Justice implying that the death of the Master’s father was not enough to wake him up to fear Death enough to make the most of his life? Is that why the Master is caught off guard? Was his arrogance his own undoing? Did he think he could live forever? In his statement, “I welcome only friends here,” is he repeating a remark that his father once said, and is that why Death counsels him with “we were friends at the end?” Was the Master’s father also as arrogant as his son? Death, in this poem, now controls the stage. He explains himself as humbly as Death can. He did not mean to frighten the gardener. “Old men mistake my gestures.” This statement is close to being read as a private joke. The Gardener mistook his gestures to mean that Death was coming for him, whereas the Master mistook his gestures to mean that he was some stranger come to try to win favors. But the last joke is yet to come, and of course Justice portrays it so simply and so powerfully that the last line turns the whole poem inside out. Justice makes fools of everyone, the Master as well as everyone who reads this poem. Of course that is why Death allowed the Gardener to leave. Of course Death knew exactly what he was doing. Of course the Master did not know what was going on, but neither did any of the readers. “I only meant to ask him / To show me to his master. / I take it you are he?” Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on “Incident in a Rose Garden,” in Poetry for Students, The Gale Group, 2002. Hart is a freelance writer of literary themes.
What is Gained and Lost
Many reasons can dictate why writers revise their work after it has been published: psychological distance from subject matter, a change in aesthetics, a belief that a poem is never finished. Donald Justice is an inveterate reviser of his own writing. Like Yeats, he believes that revising is a lifelong process and that his poems can always be better. For his Selected Poems, Justice revised a number of poems and “Incident in a Rose Garden” substantially. The changes Justice made, however, effectively create a new poem. The first version of the poem is written as a mini-drama. Three characters interact with one another through dialogue. No narrator intervenes to comment on the action or to describe the setting. It is a spare, elliptical poem, which succeeds because it shows rather than tells the reader what to see. The revised version changes to the master’s first person point of view, adds a little explanatory apparatus to the dialogue, and deepens a secondary theme. The poem opens now with these new lines:
The gardener came running, An old man, out of breath. Fear had given him legs.
Adding this information allows readers to see the gardener as an old man before Death mentions this fact in his own speech. It also adds action, something the previous version of the poem didn’t have. Readers can see the old man running, afraid. After the gardener’s words, the master says, “We shook hands; he was off.” This revision tells readers that the poem is told from the master’s point of view. All subsequent information must be evaluated in light of this detail. The revised version demands that readers be aware that everything they see is seen through the master’s eyes. Not only does the master want others to see him as an understanding person, who can empathize with his gardener, but we must also now see Death through the master’s eyes as well. The revised version prefaces the master’s dialogue with these eleven lines:
And there stood Death in the garden, Dressed like a Spanish waiter. He had the air of someone Who because he likes arriving At all appointments early Learns to think himself patient. I watched him pinch one bloom off And hold it to his nose— A connoisseur of roses— One bloom and then another. They strewed the earth around him.
These changes have several effects: they deepen the characterization of both Death and the master, and they make what was previously a secondary theme—the relationship of death to beauty—a primary one. By providing more details about Death, Justice creates a character who transcends type. He is almost a dandy here, an aesthete with an inflated sense of himself. But the master’s psychological insight into Death’s behavior also tells us something about himself. By describing Death as someone “Who because he likes arriving / At all appointments early / Learns to think himself patient,” the master shows his ability to read others. This is significant because it makes the reversal at the end of the poem all the more poignant. His insight into Death’s demeanor doesn’t make him any less vulnerable to Death; it merely makes the fact that he is not Death’s master, as he assumes, more ironic. Death’s preoccupation with the roses also highlights the idea that beauty only exists because death exists. The very temporal nature of life enables people to experience beauty. Wallace Stevens, whose own poetry influenced Justice’s, sums up this thought in these lines from his famous poem “Sunday Morning”:
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires. Although she strews the leaves Of sure obliteration on our paths, The path sick sorrow took, the many paths Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love Whispered a little out of tenderness, She makes the willow shiver in the sun For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
For Stevens, Death has a feminine character. “She” gives birth to beauty, to all the moments of inspiration and feeling human beings experience. For Justice, Death is a male who arrives for appointments early. He is all business, and he takes pleasure in that business. His smelling of the roses is rife with allusions and meaning. It plays off the popular saying that people should “stop and smell the roses,” meaning that people should not be all about work but should take time to enjoy the good things in life. Justice’s depiction of Death here also underscores Stevens’s notion that without death, there could be no beauty. Like human beings, roses die. The last revision Justice made also deepens a reader’s image of Death. Before Death is allowed to speak, the master reports his depiction of it:
Death grinned, and his eyes lit up With the pale glow of those lanterns That workmen carry sometimes To light their way through the dusk. Now with great care he slid The glove from his right hand And held that out in greeting, A little cage of bone.
These details are true to type. Death appears, as the gardener says, like he does in his pictures. Many of the conventional personifications of death, such as the grim reaper, depict him as an emaciated figure or a skeleton either with black hollow eyes or with eyes that burn. Personifications of death appear in almost all cultures and religious traditions. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world, the Angel of Death was called Azrael. Seker was the name for death in ancient Egypt. The Greek personification of death, known as Thanatos, had a twin brother, Morpheus, the god of sleep, while the Romans had Orcus, a thin, pale figure with huge black wings. The added detail of Death reaching out to shake the master’s hand links the revised version of the poem to stories about how death takes his victims. Sammael, the Angel of Death in Jewish folklore, stands above the victim’s head, a sword with a suspended drop of poison at its tip, poised to strike. In other incarnations Death carries a rod of fire, a shaft of light, a knife or, like Justice’s Death, a scythe. Death in Justice’s poem, however, isn’t violent, just matter of fact. His demeanor is gentlemanly, almost businesslike. His handshake, not his scythe, is his weapon. A significant detail in Justice’s description is that Death wears gloves. Gloves are a marker of the dress of aristocrats, of people of privilege. This detail highlights the fact that Death is more like the master than not. The revised version of the poem not only adds more information about the characters and changes the emphasis of the poem’s theme, but it also establishes a more personal tone. The voice of the master knows Death more intimately, as do readers. By drawing out the encounter between the master and Death, Justice creates a kind of slow-motion scene. The “care” with which Death attempts to physically befriend the master, presages the master’s own death. The problem with this revision, of course, is the same as the problem with the movies Sunset Boulevard and American Beauty: it is narrated by a dead man. Justice himself was more than a decade older when he revised “Incident in a Rose Garden,” so readers might legitimately infer that his revisions are informed, at least in part, by the writer’s own experience and growing intimacy with the encroaching inevitability of death. The changes in the poem, then, reflect Justice’s own creeping mortality. Source: Chris Semansky, Critical Essay on “Incident in a Rose Garden,” in Poetry for Students, The Gale Group, 2002. Semansky publishes widely in the field of twentieth- century poetry and culture.
