The speaker/poet in Don Mackay's “Twinflower” is “working on the same old problem,/how to be both/knife and spoon” (32-34). This is, admittedly, a vague, metaphorical statement – what does it mean to be a knife or a spoon, anyway? – but what it does certainly suggest is a sense of duality, a motif which continually comes up in the poem (even found in the title). Mackay sets up a number of paralellisms to explore this duality. Through these, he ultimately indicates that poets – and humans on the whole – have a duty to be both assertive and passive in turn, specifically in the act of naming, because creativity is a cyclical process.
One of the intriguing comparisons Mackay establishes in this poem is between Carolus Linnaeus and God. Linnaeus is a creator, said to have “devised” a “system” (51). Like the Word of God found in the Bible, Linnaeus' words are also found in a book – “the field guide” (39) – which evidently has authority, for others, like the speaker, turn to it. Significantly, the system Linnaeus has created is one of words – “binomial Latin names” as the editors note under the poem. Other writers (Layton in his poem “The Fertile Muck,” for example) have made the association between the human creation of a system of words (a poem, a story, etc.) and divine creation. To broadly employ a term popularized through Tolkien's “On Fairy Stories,” Linnaeus is a “sub-creator;” in “Twinflower,” he is depicted taking a Godlike role in creating (or sub-creating) an authoritative system.
If Linnaeus is associated with God, then the twinflower takes the role of humankind. Like the human race, which, according to the Bible, is created in God's “image” (Authorized King James Version, Genesis 1:26), the twinflower joins Linnaeus “in his portrait” (54), thus partaking in its creator's image. The flower is also given Linnaeus' name, just as God gives man his likeness. The speaker writes that, linked by a name shared with its creator, the flower “rises in [its] tininess” (55). Similarly, throughout history, a connection with God has given men and women, communally and individually, a sense of greatness. For example, the early notion of the divine right of kings based the supreme authority of monarchs on their supposed divinity. More generally, one can argue that religious faith gives people a sense of their own immortal importance in the face of chaos and death.
Thus, Mackay draws a parallel between the relationship between God and humanity and the relationship between Linnaeus and the twinflower. However, this set-up is significantly blurred for a number of reasons. Firstly, although we could say the twinflower represents humanity, Linnaeus is also, literally, a human; though he creates a system of words, this is a human act. Furthermore, just as one may argue that Linnaeus, in Godlike fashion, names and defines the flower, one could also argue that the flower defines Linnaeus: after all, the poet remembers Linnaeus through his interaction with the flower; it is because of the flower that Linnaeus exists in the poem at all (this argument runs similarly to the argument that it was not God who created us in his likeness, but we who created God). As such, one cannot set up a system of parallel representation in which Linnaeus is clearly God. Rather, I think, both Linnaeus and the flower may be seen as representative of humankind; supportive of this idea is the fact that the two share a name and are found in the same portraits, indicating that their identities are intertwined. Following this line of interpretation, Linnaeus represents the assertiveness of humankind – that quality which leads to demarcation, systemization, imposition of some authority over nature – while the twinflower represents receptiveness (in the sense that the flower is receptive to the name it is given).
Let me turn, here, to consideration of one final parallel which Mackay establishes: that between Adam and the poet. Mackay indicates the association between the two by having both engaged in the same activity: looking at the twinflower. One might note that God, in the passage about Adam, takes the voice of an editor, demanding words in a hurry, drawing Adam away from his idleness (similar to how “Murry demands more cantos” in P. K. Page's “Kaleidoscope”). Adam is, in a sense, the first poet, the first to use human speech. What Mackay highlights in this passage about him, however, is not his giving of names, creating words, but his receptivity – things “came into his head” (21) – suggesting that creativity is linked to passivity. This is suggested again in the highly imaginative description of the twinflower the speaker/poet gives when he accidentally – that is, passively – comes upon it: “a shy/hoister of flags, a tiny lamp to read by” (35-36). Thus, creativity depends on a person's ability to receive words, just as the twinflower receives its name.
If poetry requires receptivity, it also certainly requires assertiveness in the way of naming and creating a system of words which demarcates reality. However, like many postmodernists, Mackay notes the limits that this requirment places on poets/humans. The flower in the poem is given the name Linnaea Borealis “to live by in the system [Linnaeus] devised” (51) – bringing to mind the question of what that flower is out of that system. Similarly, what is the flower beyond its metaphoric definition as “a tiny lamp?” (36). As a solution to the issue of the inherent imprecision of language, Mackay indicates the necessity of the constant revision of words – of recognizing that, despite the “note of certainty” (43), the assignment of a word to something does not constitute “the end” (44) of its naming. In fact, the poem begins with an instance of such revision, with the poet reconsidering and rejecting a word, “spirit” (2), which has been given a definition as “the muscle we long with” (2).
By beginning his poem as such, Mackay demonstrates that poetry and creativity require reconsideration of established words. To this end, receptivity – the pause Adam makes before he gives a name – “matters” (25). Language, however, is assertive by nature. Words demarcate reality – in deed, this is precisely the reason reconsideration is constantly necessary. In other words, creativity is a cyclical processs in which one fluctuates between being a receptive spoon – a “hollowed” instrument (“spoon”) – and an assertive, inevitably deconstructive knife.
Works Cited
Authorized King James Version Bible. Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Google Books. Web.
Mackay, Don. “Twinflower.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in Englih. Eds. Donna Bennett and Russell Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 907-908.
Page, P.K. “Kaleidoscope.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennett and Russell Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 529-531.
"spoon, n.". OED Online. March 2012. Oxford University Press. 3 April 2012
