Dark Roses

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

Michael Bullock has assembled all the poems about roses from 20 of his
books and added 19 new poems to complete this collection. The book is
beautifully printed on fine paper. Each page is watermarked with a
faint, elegant image—most of them roses, but also some figures dressed
in Oriental costumes. The poems blooming in this elegant setting,
however, are garden-variety verses. There is nothing exceptional about
Bullock’s flowers—a little mysticism, some sentimental love lyrics.
In his preface he speaks solemnly of being obsessed with the symbolism
of the rose. Unfortunately, the obsession hasn’t led to fresh
expression or new ideas. Dark Roses has two epigraphs; one of them is
William Blake’s marvelously compressed and mysterious lyric “The
Sick Rose.” Blake sets a high standard, and the poems that follow
don’t come anywhere near it. This is a volume for book collectors
rather than for poetry lovers.