Florilegium

<p>Molly Vogel’s first collection of poems <em>Florilegium</em> is an exploration of life written in ‘the language of flowers’. The poems regard flowers as both symbols and means of communication; in a broader sense they deem the natural world essential to our understanding of words ourselves and the divine. Like Coleridge’s rook in ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ the flower is a sign that connects those disparately placed both geographically and emotionally. <em>Florilegium</em> finds its blooms in Scotland as well as California; in free verse as well as stricter form; in books as well as dreams; on streets and at shrines as well as in wild gardens. Fittingly the poems are varied and vividly colourful inviting and surprising. They precede a long-form glossary a meditation growing out from the poems’ words but also from the entire history of literature and thought around flowers. Though intertwined with the poems the glossary is a collection in itself: in equal parts literary criticism philosophical treatise and prose poem.</p>