Can someone please tell me the entire poem of "Incident in a Rose Garden"? The long one, with a narration.

Question

I need to know if the narrator is the master (garden owner) or someone else that isn't in the story. I'm very sure it is the master, but my all-knowing english teacher says the narrator is just a voice.

Answer 1

Incident in a Rose Garden: Donald Justice


Gardener
Sir, I encountered Death
Just now among our roses
Thin as a scythe he stood there.

I knew him by his pictures
He had on his black coat
Black gloves, and broad black hat.

I think he would have spoken,
Seeing his mouth stood open.
Big it was, with white teeth.

As soon as he beckoned, I ran.
I ran untill I found you.
Sir, I'm quitting my job.

I want to see my sons
Once more before I die.
I want to see California.

Master
Sir, you must be that stranger
Who threatened my gardener.
This is my property, sir.

I welcome only friends here.

Death
Sir, I knew your father.
And we were friends at the end.

As for your gardener,
I did not threaten him.
Old men mistake my gestures.

I only ment to ask him
To show me to his master.
I take it you are he?


"Donald Justice included “Incident in a Rose Garden” in his 1967 collection of poems, Night Light, and revised the poem for his Selected Poems, published by Atheneum, in 1979. Unlike most of Justice’s other poems, “Incident in a Rose Garden” tells a story. The three characters, the Gardener, the Master, and Death, play out a familiar scene in which Death, whom Justice describes in stereotypical fashion as adorned in black and being “thin as a scythe,” mistakes the identity of one character for another. The language is simple, yet formal, the dialogue straightforward, the theme clear: Death may come when least expected; live life with that thought in mind. Other themes addressed include the relationship of human beings to nature, self-deception, and fate versus self-creation. In its use of stock characters and situation and its obvious moral, the poem resembles a medieval allegory.

In the revised version of “Incident in a Rose Garden,” Justice moves from an objective point of view, which contains only the dialogue of the characters, to a first person point of view in which the Master relates the story. This change allows for a more detailed description of the Gardener and Death and gives the surprise ending more bite. The relationship between a consciousness of death and an appreciation of life is a theme in Wallace Stevens’s poetry, which Justice notes as a primary influence on his own writing. Justice dedicates the poem to poet Mark Strand who, like Justice, writes about the presence of death in everyday life and the ways in which the self responds to and is shaped by that presence."

"Another poem which undergoes an even greater structural modification is "Incident in a Rose Garden." The original, first published in Night Light, appeared as a strict dialogue in which three characters speak: a gardener, the master of the property, and Death. In the modified form, Justice inserted the dialogue into a fleshy sketch to supplement the bony framework of the former version. In the new narrative Death enters "dressed like a Spanish waiter," and a magnificent description of the meeting between the master and Death is appended:

Death grinned, and his eyes lit up
With the pale glow of those lanterns
That workmen carry sometimes
To light their way through the dusk.
Now with great care he slid
The glove from his right hand
And held that out in greeting,
A little cage of bone."



What I find interesting is how closely the poem resembles this:

""The Appointment in Samarra"
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])
The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

Answer 2

Banquets and soliloquies Crowded for a music Bread and water sufficed Haunted truth Lilting drama feigned Conveyed by means of a tender phrase. Unheard. Insanity and eloquence What maddened brilliance A tear shed to your blood. Raging silence doomed To echo in sealed caves Enhance the studying satisfaction. Dragons and angels Revenged sour and candy The dagger dug deep... My feeble try at minimalism...

Answer 3

try www..sparknotes.com

we read that last year when i was in english 9, im cant really remember but i think the narrator is just the owner