Some of his lines, Hughes continued, "have about as much poetic life as a refrigerated plastic flower".
As workers unloaded a refrigerated truck, flower buyers holding paper coffee cups and cell phones were circulating, indicating their choices with a pointed finger or a quick word.
(The Doris Day remark apparently alluded to the fact that he'd been around for a long time but had yet to lose his political virginity by getting involved in the antiwar movement, as many other poets had). Some of his lines, Hughes continued, "have about as much poetic life as a refrigerated plastic flower". Nasty reviews wound him, even stupid ones like this by someone he's never heard of.
The flowers are "refrigerated" in place, and there even seems to be one advantage: their bloom season lasts longer.
From Miami's airport, the flowers are loaded into refrigerated trucks — 200 are needed each day — and from there many go to warehouses in South Florida, where they are repackaged, assembled into bouquets, and then shipped all over the country.
They worry that retail florists will be tempted to give more of their business to the dozens of dealers who travel door to door and sell directly off their refrigerated trucks, a competing source of wholesale flowers that emerged 15 years ago.
Bodies were also placed inside a refrigerated truck ordinarily used to transport freshly cut flowers.
They passed a bouquet of wilted flowers, sitting in a black bucket next to the refrigerated trailer.
Temporary workers have been told to go home because refrigerated warehouses at the airport are stuffed with ripening fruit, vegetables and flowers, and there is no room for more until planes can take away the produce.
He carried them into a refrigerated storage room where I saw a puzzling sight: buckets full of unusual long-stemmed flowers.
