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Among his poems, I believe “The Flower Man” is one of Mister Miner’s most demonstrative examples of Simpleism. Despite housing a strict economy of words it contains an immeasurably broad range of depth in its undertaking. The “flower man” himself embodies many characteristic traits of the items he sells. The people walking past his “doorway” are the sun that sustains him. The last line may indicate, however, that he is receiving far less sun than he requires. Like a perennial flower, however, perhaps his withering is simply a stage in the process of life; he will wither only to regain full life in the ever-distant spring.
One cannot read the poem without viewing the similarity in the word “peddling” and the word “petal”. The word “bouquet” also bears the first three letters of the word “bounty”; this reinforces that, for him, the two are inseparable.
The word “doorway” in the first line is used as a rhyme with the word “bouquet”. This prompts the reader to give the same pattern of stress of “DOOR-way” to the word “BOU-quet” while the latter outside of this context would normally be pronounced “bou-QUET”. Mister Miner means for us to see the preeminence poetry has over the way in which words in a poetic milieu are to be pronounced1.
There are many poems among Mister Miner’s collection which focus on those who live off the streets. I believe this concentration has to do with Mister Miner’s interest on the most visual elements of society, economical and otherwise. It is on the streets that these culminate, where people meet people on their daily beats with both randomness and anonymity. Like the early Mesopotamians who relied on the natural cycles of nature, and more importantly like the ancient Egyptians who spent each night in hopes the sun had not set forever, the flower man lies dark and miserable in his shady recess waiting for life to shine brightly down upon him.