I work for a professor in the Theology department who's also an English professor. Her Intro to Lit class was supposed to read and write a response on "Supernatural Love"; since I'd have to grade these responses, I figured I'd better read the poem. The response prompt was for readers to make connections between the narrator's understanding of herself, her father, and the Incarnation through the symbols of blood, flowers, and nails/needles.
The poem's narrator is a woman looking back on her time as a four year old girl. Then, the girl called carnations "Christ's flowers," though at the time she didn't know why. She remembers her father at a dictionary in his study while she's cross-stitching a word she can't yet read: "Beloved". Her father reads the defintion of carnation, learning that its part of the clove family and its Latin root is "flesh." Flipping to the word "clove," her father finds its root word is Latin for "nail." The father comes to a sudden realization of flesh, nail, and the red carnation flower ("Christ's flowers") just as the girl stabs herself with her cross-stitching needle. She cries to her father, like Christ called for his on his cross for his beloveds, and the father comes to the rescue.
Obviously there are a lot of text-to-text symbol connections in this poem. I was able to visualize quite a bit of this poem because it was so full of imagery.
Schnackenberg, G. (1976?). Supernatural love. Chicago, IL: The Poetry Foundation.
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