The Full Text of “Poppies”
The Full Text of “Poppies”
-
“Poppies” Introduction
-
“Poppies” is a poem by the English poet Jane Weir, first published in 2005 as part of her collection The Way I Dressed. Written in response to the poet Carol Ann Duffy’s call for more war poems about the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Weir’s poem imagines the trials and difficulties of war from the perspective of a mother who sends her child off to fight. The poem investigates this grief by comparing it, through an extended metaphor, to the more general feeling of anxiety that all parents face as their children prepare to enter a frightening and often violent world.
-
-
“Poppies” Summary
-
It was three days before the anniversary of the end of World War I, and people had already put poppies on the graves of people who died in the war. Before you went off, I pinned one of the poppies onto the front fold of your jacket, its red petals made of creased paper covering up the strip of yellow fabric that ran along the border of your suit jacket.
I wrapped some clear tape wrapped around my hand in order to pick as many white cat hairs off of you as I could, turned your shirt collar down, and stopped faced from looking too sad and emotional. I wanted to gently rub the tip of my nose against yours, pretending to give Eskimos kisses like we did when you were a small child. I wanted to run my fingers through your black, gelled curls, but I resisted. Everything I said came out wrong, like fabric coming apart.
But I was brave and walked with you to the front door, and even swung it open it for you. To you, the world outside seemed full of wonder and opportunity, like a treasure chest. You were gone in a fraction of a second, drunk with the possibilities. After you left, I went to your bedroom and released a singing bird from its cage. Later I saw a single dove fly out of a pear tree and I followed it here, along the walls of the churchyard. My stomach was rumbling with anxiety and I wasn't dressed for the cold weather—I didn't have a hat, warm coat, scarf, or gloves.
At the top of the hill, I traced the writing on the war monument with my fingers. I leaned against the monument, making it look like it and I were two halves of a wishbone (the forked bird bone that people snap and make wishes on at meals). The dove soared freely through the air, as if it were stitching decorative embroidery across the sky. And I listened, hoping to hear your voice coming up from the playground on the wind.
-
-
“Poppies” Themes
-
War, Parenthood, and Grief
“Poppies” addresses the anxieties and grief that parents face as they send their children to fight in war. It does so through an extended metaphor, comparing going to war to a more mundane kind of departure: a mother sending her child to school. Though the child is full of energy and enthusiasm—a metaphor for the patriotic fervor that soldiers feel as they go to fight for their country—the mother is decidedly less enthusiastic. Instead of celebrating the glory, bravery, and sacrifice of soldiers, the poem thus focuses on how war affects those who stay behind, specifically exploring the anxiety and grief parents may feel knowing they can no longer protect, and in fact may forever lose, their children.
Though the poem never explicitly states that it is about war, it is implied throughout. For one thing, it takes place before "Armistice Sunday"—seemingly a combination of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, both of which commemorate the end of WWI. And the poem begins with the speaker pinning a poppy to her child’s jacket. These flowers are used in the United Kingdom to memorialize the soldiers who died in WWI, and they thus serve as symbols for violence and war—and for the grief and mourning that parents experience when their children are killed in battle.
The child's "blazer," meanwhile, could be part of a military dress uniform—in which case the poem can be read as being about the speaker's child literally getting ready to go to war. But the blazer could just as easily be interpreted as part of a school uniform—in which case, the speaker is simply helping her younger child get ready for school, and the poem should be taken more metaphorically. This ambiguity helps ground and universalize the experience being described. Essentially, the poem makes the experience of sending a child to war feel all the more recognizable by comparing it to something pretty much everyone has gone through (going to school).
In either case, the child greets the prospect of leaving and home and heading out into the world with enthusiasm and wonder. For the child, the world is “overflowing / like a treasure chest.” In other words, it is a place full of riches and delights that the child is just about to discover and enjoy. As a result, the child is “intoxicated”—almost drunk with joy upon heading off. Read figuratively, the child’s enthusiasm represents the patriotic fervor that young soldiers bring to battle.
The speaker does not share her child’s sense of enthusiasm, of course; instead she is so anxious about her child’s future that she feels physically ill. And where the child seems captivated by war's opportunity for glory, the speaker is focused on the grief that war creates for loved ones left behind. When the speaker herself goes outside after her child has left, she finds herself at a “war memorial.” Like the “poppies” earlier the poem, the “war memorial” is a reminder of the violence and trauma that accompanies war. And the speaker seems almost irresistibly drawn to these reminders: wherever she turns, she sees evidence of the damage that war leaves in its wake.
The poem ends with the suggestion that the speaker’s child dies in battle: all that’s left of the child at the end of the poem is the child’s “playground voice.” This, combined with the poem's earlier reference to shows of affection between the speaker and her child when that child was still "little," suggests that the speaker longs to return to a time when she could protect her child from the world—that is, to a time before that child grew up. In a way, then, the poem broadens its image of parenthood and grief. Children becoming adults and leaving home is always accompanied by an element of fear and anxiety on the part of their parents, the poem suggests, though this is magnified when a child's leaving home also means going to war.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-35
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Poppies”
-
Lines 1-6
Three days before ...
... around your blazer.The poem opens by declaring that it is “three days before Armistice Sunday.” This seems to be a combination of two public holidays in England honoring soldiers who died in World War I: Armistice Day (which actually falls on a Monday), and Remembrance Sunday. Right from the poem's opening line, then, war hovers in the background.
The poppy is also part of these holidays: since 1921, people have used paper poppies—also called “remembrance poppies”—to honor fallen soldiers, either by leaving poppies on soldiers graves and wearing them on their clothes. The flower symbolizes the war—and, more broadly, the death and grief that war creates.
Meanwhile, pinning a flower to someone's lapel—the folded front part of a suit coat or jacket—is a tender act that a parent might do for a child on a big day (or, perhaps, that a person might do for a lover—though, as the poem continues, it'll become clear that this is not a romantic relationship). This clues the reader in as to who this poem is about, but it is not clear yet exactly how old this child is—whether this child is an adult going off to war, or simply a younger child going off to school. Part of the confusion comes from the word "blazer," which could refer to a child's school uniform or to a military uniform.
Both interpretations are valid, and the speaker uses references to school as an extended metaphor: sending a child to school is like sending a child off to war. It is a much smaller version of the same thing, and produces similar anxiety and grief in parents who are no longer able to shield their children from the dangers of the world. So even if the child's "blazer" is part of a school uniform, it is also a metaphor for a soldier's uniform. (Of course, sending a child to school comes with the assumption that a child will return home; parents sending a child to war do not have such certainty.)
The speaker also takes an unusual perspective on war. Instead of focusing on the bravery of the soldiers or the glory they win in battle, she is concerned with the grief of those who stay behind—especially the parents of soldiers.
In the poem’s opening stanza, the speaker provides a couple of hints that help the reader get a handle on the poem’s extended metaphor. Note, for instance, the way the speaker describes the paper poppy. It’s a tightly folded paper flower, with petals overlapping each other—potentially something very beautiful. But the speaker describes it almost as a wound, using a series of metaphors. Its folds are like “spasms,” involuntary and painful contractions of the muscles. It “disrupt[s] a blockade / of yellow bias binding.” Literally, the speaker is just saying that it covers up the yellow border of her child’s blazer. But the word “blockade” is a military term: it often describes a flotilla of ships blocking off an enemy port, so they can’t bring supplies or troops in. The metaphor makes it sound like the paper flower has broken through the lines, causing death and destruction.
An alliterative /p/ sound also runs through the passage, linking together “poppies,” “placed,” and “pinned.” The alliteration suggests that “pinn[ing]” a poppy on the child’s jacket is like placing one on a grave: the speaker feels like this is an act of memorial and grief for the child. In this sense, the alliteration reinforces the extended metaphor: the child is not just heading to school but, metaphorically, to war.
The first six lines of the poem establish its formal pattern. It’s written in free verse: it doesn’t have any meter or rhyme. The tone is direct and conversational. But the poem still betrays the speaker’s anxiety and grief. Note, for instance, how heavily enjambed these opening lines are. Despite the matter-of-fact tone, the speaker is anxious and rushing, the poem spilling urgently down the page.
-
Lines 7-11
Sellotape bandaged around ...
... of my face. -
Lines 11-16
I wanted to ...
... of your hair. -
Lines 16-18
All my words ...
... slowly melting. -
Lines 18-22
I was brave, ...
... were away, intoxicated. -
Lines 23-24
After you'd gone ...
... from its cage. -
Lines 25-29
Later a single ...
... of scarf, gloves. -
Lines 30-35
On reaching the ...
... on the wind.
-
-
“Poppies” Symbols
-
Poppies
Poppies symbolize the devastating violence of World War I. They also symbolize the collective acts of grieving that followed the war, the rituals that people created to mourn and to remember its destruction. Finally, for the speaker, the poppies remind her that her child is potentially the target of such violence.
A poppy is a bright red flower. Beginning in 1921, two years after the end of World War I, people started using paper poppies—also called “remembrance poppies”—to commemorate the soldiers who died in World War I. They were inspired by the poem “In Flanders Field” by John McCrae, which describes a World War I graveyard with red poppies growing between the crosses that mark each grave.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 2: “poppies”
-
Song Bird
Songbirds are traditionally symbols of poets: the beautiful songs they sing are like poems. After the speaker’s child leaves home, the speaker goes into the kid’s “bedroom” and releases a “song bird from its cage.” This is a strange and inexplicable act—until one realizes that the songbird is primarily a symbol. In this moment, then, the speaker seems to be freeing poetry itself, releasing it from its cage. In other words, the speaker’s response to her anxiety about her child leaving home (and, in the extended metaphor that runs through the poem, going to fight in a war) is to turn to poetry. The speaker turns to poetry for solace—but that comfort doesn’t seem to last long: after all, only a few lines later, the speaker is out in the cold, full of anxiety. The poem thus subtly suggests that poetry itself has only limited powers to help mothers assuage their anxiety about their children's fate—in war or in the world more broadly.
Alternatively, the bird can be taken as a representation of the speaker's child—now released from the safe "cage" of home and set off into the world, for better or for worse.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 24: “song bird”
-
Dove
Traditionally, doves are symbols of peace. In line 25, the speaker sees a “single dove” fly out of a “pear tree.” The speaker follows the dove to a "church yard”—in other words, a graveyard. The appearance of a “dove” is particularly striking because the poem is so interested in war—indeed, the poem is an extended metaphor for the anxiety and grief that parents feel as their children fight and die in war. The dove is an alternative to this world of war and destruction, which the speaker chases. It offers hope and relief, even as the poem meditates on the costs of war—a symbol that something else, something better, remains possible.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 25: “dove”
- Line 33: “dove”
-
-
“Poppies” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
End-Stopped Line
“Poppies” contains very few end-stops, and many of these are quite soft and subtle. The first really strong end-stop falls in line 6. Lines 3 ("on ... left,"), 4 ("I ... petals,"), 7 ("Sellotape ... hand,"), and 17 ("flattened ... felt,") are all technically end-stopped, but they hardly count, since the sentences continue with power and energy after the line break; the commas offer only the slightest pause. There’s thus not another strongly felt end-stop until line 22. In a sense, this is fitting. End-stops feel certain and sure; they often express confidence and control on the part of a speaker. The speaker of “Poppies” experiences no such confidence or certainty: instead, she is consumed by anxiety about her child’s safety as that child goes off to fight in a war.
And even when the speaker does use end-stop, it does not express confidence or certainty. More often, the end-stops that appear in “Poppies” express doubt, disappointment, and concern. Note for instance, the end-stop in line 21-22:
... A split second
and you were away, intoxicated.The speaker is describing here how her child—excited and enthusiastic—runs out the door. This is a key moment in the poem’s extended metaphor: it describes the way young soldiers go out into battle with energy and patriotic fervor. The speaker doesn’t share that fervor: instead, she is anxious about her child’s safety. The end-stop conveys that anxiety: it is sudden, sharp, and final. It suggests that the child has made an irreversible decision. The choice to go to war can’t be undone: the speaker has to live with the consequences of her child’s decision. Far from feeling certain and confidence, the end-stop instead amplifies the speaker’s anxious energy, by underlining the limits of her power: she cannot protect her child once that child is “away.”
Where end-stopped line appears in the poem:- Line 3: “left,”
- Line 4: “petals,”
- Line 6: “blazer.”
- Line 7: “hand,”
- Line 17: “felt,”
- Line 22: “intoxicated.”
- Line 23: “bedroom,”
- Line 24: “cage.”
- Line 25: “tree,”
- Line 26: “me,”
- Line 29: “gloves.”
- Line 31: “memorial,”
- Line 32: “wishbone.”
- Line 33: “sky,”
- Line 35: “wind.”
-
Enjambment
-
Caesura
-
Alliteration
-
Assonance
-
Consonance
-
Metaphor
-
Simile
-
Extended Metaphor
-
-
"Poppies" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Armistice Sunday
- Poppies
- War Graves
- Lapel
- Spasms
- Blockade
- Yellow Bias Binding
- Sellotape
- Eskimos
- Blackthorns
- Intoxicated
- Tucks
- Darts
- Pleats
- Reinforcements
- Wishbone
- Pulled
- Ornamental Stitch
-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “Armistice Sunday”)
This appears to be a combination of Armistice Day, which falls every year on November 11, and Remembrance Sunday, which takes place on the second Sunday of November. Both are public holidays in the United Kingdom that honor the soldiers who died fighting in World War I. (In the United States, it is celebrated as Veteran’s Day).
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Poppies”
-
Form
“Poppies” is made up of four stanzas written in free verse. In other words, it doesn’t have a meter or rhyme scheme, and the stanzas are different lengths as well—some of them are as short as 6 lines, some as long as 11. This gives the poem a conversational, intimate feeling. Instead of adhering to a specific pattern, the poem shifts in accordance with the speaker’s emotions: sometimes it feels expansive and full of energy, sometimes quiet and restrained. In a way, this is fitting: the poem describes a speaker struggling with her child growing up and going off to war. That struggle is reflected in the poem’s form. Where a strict, regular form might suggest that the speaker is confident and collected, the poem’s variations and shifts echo the anxiety and insecurity that the speaker feels as she watches her child venture out into a dangerous, threatening world.
Compared to some free verse poems, though, “Poppies” is relatively controlled. It has variations in line and stanza length, but those variations are small compared to a poem like Langston Hughes’s “I, Too” or T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” both of which use very short lines—sometimes only one syllable—and very long lines right next to each other. The formal variations in “Poppies” suggest that the speaker is struggling to control her emotions. But, they also suggest that the speaker is managing to do so, at least publicly. As the speaker says in line 18, “I was brave.” Though the speaker experiences a lot of turmoil and anxiety about her child going out to fight, she puts a good face on things.
-
Meter
“Poppies” is written in free verse, which means it doesn’t have a set meter. Like many free verse poems, its rhythms shift with the speaker’s emotions—and so do the number of syllables in each line. Some lines approach regular meter, like line 26:
and this is where it has led me…
This is a pretty good, though not perfect, line of iambic tetrameter, a meter with a da DUM rhythm and four poetic feet per line. It makes sense that this line would exhibit some metrical regularity: the speaker is describing being led to the “church yard walls” almost against her will. Meter similarly leads the poet, governing how the poem sounds. But the next line is in a totally different:
skirting the church yard, my stomach busy
This line has 10 syllables, with an uneven and unpredictable mix of iambs (unstressed-stressed) and trochees (stressed-unstressed). The line feels as anxious and unsettled as the speaker’s stomach. Even though the poem does occasionally have metrically regular lines, it thus uses shifts in its rhythm—like this one—to give the reader an immediate, visceral sense of the speaker’s discomfort and anxiety.
-
Rhyme Scheme
“Poppies” is written in free verse, so it doesn’t have a set rhyme scheme. The poem relies on other devices—like alliteration and enjambment—to help it feel rhythmical and musical. Indeed, the poem only uses rhyme once, in lines 25-27:
Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,
and this is where it has led me,
skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busyThe /ee/ sound in “tree” lines up with “me”: a perfect rhyme. That makes a certain kind of sense: the speaker is describing how he or she follows the “single dove” almost involuntarily, going wherever it goes. As the rhyme runs from one line to the next, it feels like the speaker wandering around her village, following the dove where it leads. The next rhyme, though, is a bit off. Where “tree” and “me” both rhyme stressed syllables, but in “busy,” the /ee/ sound falls on an unstressed syllable. After the strong rhythm established in lines 25-26, line 27 thus feels syncopated. It mimics the speaker’s “busy” “stomach”: it is unsteady and unsettled, anxious and off. The poem’s only instance of rhyme thus carefully tracks the speaker’s emotions as she deals with the anxiety that comes from her child metaphorically heading off to war.
-
-
“Poppies” Speaker
-
The speaker of “Poppies” is a parent seeing a child off (depending on how you read the poem, either to school or to war). Although the speaker never explicitly mentions her gender, it is safe to assume that the speaker is a woman. In interviews, the poet, Jane Weir, has stressed that the speaker is a mother, and that few war poems are written from the perspectives of mothers. The poem is thus an innovative and forceful intervention in the tradition of war poetry, asking its readers to empathize with those who stay home during violent conflicts.
Of course, especially in today's day and age, a father could certainly be the one seeing a child off as well! The child here is not given a gender either; though soldiers in WWI would have been men, the poem is not tied to a specific conflict and this child could also easily be a young woman.
In any case, part of the poem's power comes from the contrast between the way the speaker and her child feel. The speaker’s child is full of enthusiasm and ready to go to war. In lines 20-21, the speaker notes that the “world” seems to this child “like a treasure chest overflowing.” But the speaker doesn’t share her child’s enthusiasm. She focuses on the loss of life, the early deaths, the grief and mourning that come from war.
As such, the speaker wants to retreat to an earlier moment—when she could protect her child from the violence of the world. She dreams about playing affectionate games with her child when the child was “little.” The speaker’s mood in the poem is thus complicated. She is nostalgic for an earlier time, and is also deeply anxious and unsettled about the present. And, as the poem ends, it suggests that the speaker’s child has died in battle—so the speaker’s nostalgia turns to grief and mourning.
-
-
“Poppies” Setting
-
“Poppies” describes a November morning in an English village. The speaker pins a paper poppy on her child’s uniform, before sending the child off, either to school or to war. After the child leaves, the speaker follows a “single dove” to the graveyard of the local church and then up a hill, where there’s a “war memorial.” The speaker doesn’t describe these different locations: the reader never gets a sense of what the village looks like or how far the walk is from house to church to hill—even though, as Weir has acknowledged in interviews about the poem, the village is based on her own home village, a place she knows well. Her decision to withhold details about the village itself is thus intentional and important to the poem: the speaker is focused on her anxiety, her memories, and the dangers she foresees for her child. The outside world falls away as the speaker wrestles with these fears and anxieties.
The poem was first published in 2005 and it seems to be set in the present: indeed, Jane Weir has described writing the poem in response to the deaths of British soldiers in the modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The references to "Armistice Sunday" and "remembrance poppies" also imply that it is set in England. Its message about the nature of grief, however, can be applied to any number of conflicts throughout history—or to anytime a parent must let their child head off to fend for themselves.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Poppies”
-
Literary Context
Jane Weir was born in Manchester, England, in 1963 to an English mother and an Italian father. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Way I Dressed During the Revolution, published in 2005—which contains “Poppies.” Like many poems published in English toward the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, “Poppies” is a relatively relaxed poem in terms of formal. It’s written in free verse, and it uses the sharp enjambments and variable rhythms that traditionally characterize such poems. But it’s not engaged in any radical formal experiments, nor is it trying to break with tradition or generate wild poetic innovations (unlike the poets who developed free verse at the turn of the 20th century).
Instead, Weir’s poem is focused on personal experience, which it renders in vivid detail. This places it in a tradition of contemporary poetry sometimes called “lyric narrative.” Lyric narrative poems are written in free verse, but they don’t get too crazy in terms of playing with form and structure. They are concerned with the precise, intimate details of everyday life, and they use those details to reflect on larger themes, problems, and ideas. Thus, in “Poppies,” the speaker’s anxieties about her child serve as an extended metaphor for the anxieties and grief that parents feel as their children go off to fight in wars.
Though Weir approaches war from a unique perspective—that of a parent—war poetry is not a new genre, and poets have long expressed the glory and horrors of war in verse. Take, for example, the many graphic anti-war poems of WWI soldier Wilfred Owen ("Futility," "Exposure," "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Anthem for Doomed Youth"), which focus on the visceral terror and meaninglessness of such conflicts. Other modern British poets have also tackled the lasting trauma of warfare, as can been seen in Owen Sheers's "Mametz Wood," Simon Armitage's "Remains," and Carol Ann Duffy's "War Photographer."
Historical Context
“Poppies” was first published in 2005, and it is set in present day England. It was written in response to a call from Carol Ann Duffy for more poems about the deaths of British soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars began in 2001 and 2004, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. They were led by the United States, but British troops fought in both.
However, the speaker of the poem does not explicitly mention these conflicts. Instead, she alludes to World War I, which represents the violence, war, and trauma that threatens her child. World War I (19014-1919) was one of the defining conflicts of the 20th century. It involved most of the countries in Europe. Although many Europeans initially celebrated the start of the war—imagining a brief, glorious conflict—the war quickly bogged down. On the Western Front, French and English troops fought German soldiers from fixed trenches—and in huge battles, like Verdun, hundreds of thousands of soldiers died for gains of a few inches.
The war finally ended on November 11th, 1919, a date celebrated as Armistice Day in England and Veteran’s Day in the United States. In 1921, people started using red poppies to commemorate the soldiers who died in the war, wearing them on their coats and jackets and laying them on memorials and graves. Many of the battlefields in eastern France where the war was fought are planted with poppies now. Although the war ended 80 years before “Poppies” was written, it remains a potent reminder of the capacity of human beings to cause unspeakable pain and suffering for their fellow creatures.
-
-
More “Poppies” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Remembrance Poppies — An article from the British Legion about the history of the Remembrance Poppy.
-
Jane Weir's Life Story — A brief biography of Jane Weir from the British-based Poetry Archive, with links to some of her other poems.
-
Jane Weir Discusses and Reads "Poppies" — The poet walks around her village in the north of England, showing off the key places in the poem and discussing her thinking behind it. At the 6:30 mark she reads the poem aloud.
-
World War I — A brief history of World War I from Britannica.
-
"Exit Wounds" — An article on the British poet Carol Ann Duffy's decision to commission war poems in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which lead to Jane Weir writing "Poppies."
-
-
