“In this thesis, I explore the aesthetic-rhetorical power of Songs and Flowers and how it facilitates identification with and changed perceptions about Latter-day Saint women. Using rhetorical aesthetics as my theoretical framework, I will analyze four poems selected from the compilation. I will show how poetic form becomes a vehicle for rhetorical function by inviting aesthetic experiences of openness and sincerity, gratification of expectations, communal experience, and wholeness despite difference. I hope to demonstrate how rhetorical aesthetics provides an alternative way of reading poetic sentimentality and conventionality in this collection, an approach informed by context, purpose, and audience influence.”