Pink has become a favored cultural color, more subtle, less primitive than red:
black mixed with pink is considered seductive, innocent when used with white
and acquired its own name just in the late 17th century it’s commonly read.
In the 1940s, blue for boys, pink for girls became the custom, an accepted rite;
Mamie Eisenhower’s 1953 inaugural pink gown was a major fashion highlight
and Jacqueline Kennedy helped to make it associated with high-fashion spread
although the famous portrait, “Pinkie” symbolized youth in simple daylight.
There are amazing hues of pink in rose, dahlia, hyacinth, and others flower beds
varying from light to deepest pink attracting insects—pollination widespread.
Names for pink—cotton candy, cherry blossom pink, and fuchsia give delight;
tickled pink, seeing pink elephants, in the pink, are sayings that have spread.
Breast Cancer Awareness uses pink ribbons to stand out in the public limelight
with distinction to combat a wide health problem. In “Young Goodman Brown,”
Faith wears a pink hair ribbon to symbolize innocence; in Little Women, bound
ribbons appear on Amy’s twins. All told—pink packs a lot of cultural insight.
Carol Smallwood’s over four dozen books include Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching, on Poets & Writers Magazine list of Best Books for Writers. Water, Earth, Air, Fire, and Picket Fences is a 2014 collection from Lamar University Press; Divining the Prime Meridian, is forthcoming from WordTech Editions. She won the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award of Marquis Who’s Who. She has appeared in such journals as: Drunken Boat; The Writer’s Chronicle; The Main Street Rag; Jelly Bucket; English Journal.Carol has founded, supports humane societies.
Thank you for honoring the color pink, which is the favorite color of many girls, including one of my daughters. I enjoyed reading this tribute … To my untrained ear, perhaps it has an essay “feel”, which is fine, too.
Never in my life, until now, have I given so much thought to the color pink.
I may just think about pink, all day long.
Your poem gives us relief from old fashioned formal poetry to show it can be modern and contemporary. It lacks the passion of older poems, but shows the sophistication of poems today.
Yes, I agree about that sophistication, Michael. Elegant, too, I’d say.
It has simplicity of thought but given in your special way, Carol. (One wonders how many pulled hairs, to make it come out that way.)
Yawn.
Really enjoyed this Carol – such an easy conversational style, packed with information, and set with the formal stanzaic and rhyme constrains. Quite delightful – not to say informative! Thank you.
Why is it that we have light green, light blue, pale yellow and all, but we do not have “light red,” which what pink essentially is?