One Perfect Rose

Frustration with Men

If you take a peek at Enough Rope, the volume of poems in which "One Perfect Rose" appeared, you'll notice that Parker was a little annoyed with men. Take a poem like "Men," for example, which concludes with the line "they make me sick, they make me tired," or the ironically titled "Love Song," which contains the rather upsetting lines "My own dear love, he is all my heart—, / And I wish somebody'd shoot him." Yikes!

"One Perfect Rose" isn't too happy with men either. Sure, there's nothing about shooting, but the speaker is clearly sick of getting flowers from dudes. It seems that she was in a slightly—just slightly—better mood when she wrote "One Perfect Rose."