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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Death is a Form of Rebirth

One of the central themes of “The Wild Iris” relates to the speaker’s reframing of death as a form of rebirth. The poem’s botanical speaker begins the poem by addressing us human readers and explicitly drawing our attention to the matter of death (lines 1–4):

At the end of my suffering 

there was a door.

 

Hear me out: that which you call death 

I remember.

Already the attentive reader can intuit that the speaker has a perspective on death that differs from that of many humans. The speaker uses a rhetorical tactic to alert us to the idea that what we “call death” might be better known by another name. However, they don’t actually offer an alternative name. Instead, they simply describe what they “remember” about their experience. According to the speaker, they experienced an uncomfortable period of dormancy in the cold, hard earth. Eventually, the “stiff earth” (line 13) softened, “bending a little” (14) and allowing the iris to send new shoots to the surface. In other words, the speaker experienced nothing so absolute as death; they experienced a rebirth. Without using that word, they evoke this reframing of death in lines 16–20:

You who do not remember 

passage from the other world 

I tell you I could speak again: whatever 

returns from oblivion returns 

to find a voice.

Here, the speaker asserts that anyone returning from “oblivion” will find a new voice—and renewed life.

The Continuous Nature of Transformation

If death is a form of rebirth, then death cannot be understood as an absolute ending to life. Instead, death represents just one stage in an ongoing cycle of change. Transformation is therefore a continuous process. From the point of view of the poem’s botanical speaker, at least, life and death coexist in a continuous process of transformation. That’s not to say that every part of the process of transformation is enjoyable. As they note in lines 8–10, for instance, their experience of overwintering in cold, hard soil was deeply unpleasant:

It is terrible to survive 

as consciousness 

buried in the dark earth.

However, the speaker’s ultimate point is that, while unpleasant, “that which [we humans] call death” (line 3) is just one stage in an ongoing process. They indicate as much in lines 11–15:

Then it was over: that which you fear, being 

a soul and unable 

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth 

bending a little. And what I took to be 

birds darting in low shrubs.

Eventually, the period of fallowness came to an end, the “stiff earth” gave way, and the speaker could send shoots up to the surface, where life has continued apace throughout their brief absence.

The Vital Mystery of Life

Although the speaker of “The Wild Iris” specifically addresses the subject of death, the way they reframe death as a form of rebirth indicates that the poem is also about life. Indeed, the speaker pays close attention to the embodied experience of life and the mystery of vitality. One example of this attention appears in lines 5–7, where they convey the fragmentary way in which they perceive the world around them:

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. 

Then nothing. The weak sun 

flickered over the dry surface.

For the speaker, life is experienced primarily through the subtle shifting of light and shadow. Light is especially important for plants, since it’s their primary source of nourishment and energy. Light quite literally is life for the speaker. Yet the speaker also emphasizes that vitality is something that erupts from within their very being. In the poem’s closing lines (21–23), they offer a somewhat esoteric image:

from the center of my life came 

a great fountain, deep blue 

shadows on azure seawater.

It seems strange that the wild iris, which has lived their whole life in a garden, would know enough about the ocean to conjure the image of “deep blue / shadows on azure seawater.” Even so, this mysterious image has an almost spiritual quality in the poem—one that captures the speaker’s sense of their vital life force returning in the spring.

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