"Poppies in July" appeared in Sylvia Plath's important posthumous collection Ariel (1965). In this short, nightmarish poem, a speaker gazes at a field of poppies and sees her own pain reflected back at her. The blood-red poppies—to a different viewer, a beautiful sight—only make her think of violence and "hell flames." Longing to escape from her suffering, she dreams of the "colorless" dullness she imagines the poppies' concealed "opiates" (soporific drugs) might offer her, if only she could get at them.
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The Full Text of “Poppies in July”
The Full Text of “Poppies in July”
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“Poppies in July” Summary
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“Poppies in July” Themes
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Pain and Escape
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-15
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Poppies in July”
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Lines 1-4
Little poppies, little ...
... flames. Nothing burns. -
Lines 5-8
And it exhausts ...
... Little bloody skirts! -
Lines 9-12
There are fumes ...
... hurt like that! -
Lines 13-15
Or your liquors ...
... But colorless. Colorless.
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“Poppies in July” Symbols
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The Poppies
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-15
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“Poppies in July” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
Where imagery appears in the poem:- Lines 3-4: “You flicker. I cannot touch you. / I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.”
- Line 6: “Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.”
- Line 10: “your nauseous capsules”
- Line 14: “Dulling and stilling”
- Line 15: “But colorless. Colorless.”
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Metaphor
Where metaphor appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Little poppies, little hell flames,”
- Line 7: “A mouth just bloodied.”
- Line 8: “Little bloody skirts!”
- Line 12: “If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!”
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Simile
Where simile appears in the poem:- Line 6: “Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.”
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Repetition
Where repetition appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Little,” “little”
- Line 3: “I”
- Line 4: “I”
- Lines 6-7: “a mouth. / A mouth”
- Line 7: “bloodied”
- Line 8: “Little,” “bloody”
- Line 10: “your,” “your,” “capsules”
- Line 11: “If”
- Line 12: “If”
- Line 13: “capsule”
- Line 15: “colorless,” “Colorless”
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Apostrophe
Where apostrophe appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “Little poppies, little hell flames, / Do you do no harm?”
- Line 3: “You flicker. I cannot touch you.”
- Line 5: “And it exhausts me to watch you”
- Line 8: “Little bloody skirts!”
- Line 10: “Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?”
- Line 13: “Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,”
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“Poppies in July” 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.
- Fumes
- Opiates
- Nauseous capsules
- Stilling
- Dulling
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(Location in poem: Line 9: “There are fumes that I cannot touch.”)
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Poppies in July”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“Poppies in July” Speaker
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“Poppies in July” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “Poppies in July”
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More “Poppies in July” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem (and Plath's related poem, "Poppies in October," which appears in the same collection).
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Plath's Legacy — Read a New York Times obituary of Plath that discusses her influence.
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An Interview with Plath — Listen to an interview that Plath gave in 1962, in the midst of the intensely creative period during which she wrote this poem.
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A Brief Biography — Read a short biography of Plath via the Poetry Foundation.
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The Sylvia Plath Society — Visit the Sylvia Plath Society to learn more about recent critical work on Plath.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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