Allusions to Vita Sackville-West’s (1892–1962) “moon garden” aka “white garden” entered my poetry approximately twenty years ago when I wrote a long poem titled “Negative Garden.” Though “Floral Correspondences” is an entirely invented exchange, the following works were instrumental to my thinking about and composition of this sequence:

Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, edited by Nigel Nicolson (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992).

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virgina Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1984).

And the following, by Vita Sackville-West: The Illustrated Garden Book (New York: Antheneum, 1986) and Some Flowers (London: National Trust Books, 2014), as well as her poetry collection The Garden (London: Michael Joseph Limited, 1946).

Index

Titles in italics, first lines of untitled poems in roman type.

A Caldarium of Bacteria

Bear Root, Bald-money [Book 1.3]

By the hair of the rampion

Catkin-Bearing Trees and Shrubs

Cockroach [Book 2.38]

Corn Crowfoot, Corn Buttercup

Darling

Dear

Dearest

Earth almond, cardamom

Earth that yields violet to brass

Earthworm [Book 2.72]

Electric Ray [Book 2.17]

Equisetum hyemale (Rough Horsetail)

Ferns and Fern Allies

Flowers of Brass [5.88]

Gazetteer of the Backyard …

Gladiolus [Book 4.20]

Grasscloth

Grasscloth (Millefleur)

Grasshopper [Book 2.56]

Grime from the Baths [Book 1.34]

Grime from the Gymnasium Walls
[Book 1.36]

Grime from the Wrestling School
[Book 1.35]

Habitat

Hare [Book 2.21]

Iris [Book 1.1]

Juniper [Book 1.103]

Legend

“Mixed grass, flowers, oil and sap”

“Tulips among a grass of worsted warp”

Lungs of a Fox [Book 2.41]

Lungs of the Sea [Book 2.39]

Lyme grass, marram grass, mat grass

Map of Medical Materials

My Darling

“A disagreement of winter and spring and I refuse to be disconsolate”

“The threat of frost supplanted by a dummy run of white and grey”

My Dear

My Dear Love

“Each day the light diminishes earlier”

“How to write about flowers without the nauseating sentimental phraseology”

“Mad March dreams”

My My My,

My Own Own Darling

Names of Plants

Near Running Water, Streams, and Creeks

Oh Darling

Oils, ointments, and trees

O’ My Love

Orchis Hippopotamus [Book 2.25]

Origins of the Poem

Pedanius Dioscorides in His Backyard Plot, c. 2019

Pick me …

“Peals the self-serving physic garden”

“Pours it on thick as theriac the bush-”

Plants for rough tongues and running ears

Plants Further Reduced to the Idea of Plants

Plants Reduced to the Idea of Plants

Plants that draw out bile and phlegm

Poet’s jasmine to oil the senses

Pomegranate, Carthaginian Apple [Book 1.151]

Poppies Etc. [Book 4.64, 65, 66]

Prelude

Rhubarb [Book 3.2]

Root of Scarcity

Rowan, Mountain Ash [Book 1.173]

Rue [Book 3.53]

Sea Hare [Book 2.20]

Sea Lavender [Book 4.16]

Sheathfish [sic] [Book 2.29]

So Blooms—

“a vial of viola tricolor”

“In which is assembled the many plants for whom I have tender affection”

“the remedial florilegia”

Sparganium [Book 4.21]

’Struth

Sweet Flag, Sweet Sedge [Book 1.2]

The Dedication

The Garden Body: A Florilegium

The Oath

Thickened oil of a thousand counted lilies