The Wild Iris
The Wild Iris is a personified flower that gives the collection its name. In the poem "The Wild Iris," the flower tells us about its suffering, having been buried alive beneath the earth. The iris's journey through death, rebirth, and transformation act as a metaphor for the human experience of these things. All of the personified flowers in the collection illuminate truths about human experience, and the Wild Iris serves as the first messenger, reminding humans that suffering can lead to doorways of transformation.
Witchgrass
Witchgrass, the common name for Panicum capillare, is a plant native to North America. In "Witchgrass," the personified plant points out the unjust way that humans treat it. In the humans' grief over the death of the flowers they so carefully cultivated, they blame whichever so-called "weed" grows in the bed. Witchgrass gestures toward historical instances of humans assigning blame, a practice called scapegoating. Throughout most of the poem, Witchgrass speaks in an angry tone of contempt. Towards the end of the poem, the speaker's tone cools into a distant disdain: when humans and their gardens have disappeared from the earth, Witchgrass will constitute the field. This portrays Witchgrass as a character who has a lot of rage, but who is able to consider things in the long run.
The Poet-Gardener
Some of the poems in this collection are written from the perspective of the poet-gardener, who communicates and connects with the flowers and the deity. All of the prayer poems entitled "Matins" and "Vespers" are from the point of view of this poet-gardener, as are a few other poems ("Song," for example). Often the poet-gardener is experiencing a personal struggle (with herself and her faith, or in relation to another), and she communes with the divine and with the natural world in order to discover things about herself and make meaning in her life.
The Deity
Referred to by the poet-gardener at times as "father" but mostly in the familiar address "you," the divine figure in these poems takes on various forms, including a clear morning, a spring snow, the end of winter, retreating wind, midsummer, the end of summer, early darkness, harvest, retreating light, sunset, and a lullaby. Less of an actual person, as some might imagine a god resembling, the deity in this collection is more of a divine force of creation. Often, the deity takes on a parent-like attitude toward humans, referring to them as offspring or creation, or in the diminutive. For example, in "Retreating Light," the deity compares humans to "very young children." The poems from the perspective of the divine force are in conversation with the human speaker from other poems.
