poppies

• Poppies

  Jane Weir

  SUMMARY

  • Effects of war on those left behind in domestic life - gives them a voice

  • Ambiguity, anxiety - doesn't know if he has died

  • The pain of loss

  • The fear that parents experience in letting their children go

  • Interwoven motifs of war & domestic items represents juxtaposition of domestic & military life during the war
• CONTEXT

  • Weir stated "I wanted to write a poem from the point of view of a mother and her relationship with her son, a child who was loved."

  • Textile designer as well as poet - motif of clothing
• 'Three days before Armistice Sunday and poppies had already been placed'

  • Armistice - truce - giving in to letting him go

  • Poppies - red, representing blood shed
• '(I pinned one onto your lapel,) crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding (around your blazer)'

  • Pinning a poppy onto his blazer - constructed him, has to let him go

  • 'Crimped petals' - damaged - like the effects of war

  • 'Red' - love but also blood, agony

  • 'Blockade' - troops preventing an entrance or exit. She can't block him from leaving any more

  • Blending of domestic words (lapel, blazer) & war (spasms, blockade) - whilst at home, mother still overwhelmed by thoughts of her child at war
• 'Sellotape bandaged around my hand, I rounded up as many white cat hairs as I could'

  • 'Bandage' military, relates to suffering. Mask something - like she is masking emotions

  • 'Cat hairs' domestic image
• 'All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt, slowly melting. I was brave..'

  • Spirit 'flattened' by war & loss

  • Enjambement (between felt & slowly) not just across line but STANZA - break in sentence symbolises mother's grief which is making her emotionally 'break down'

  • 'Felt' - lexical field of clothing - trying to stitch together the gap that the loss has created.

  • Asyndetic listing - mother's loss of composure

  • Caesura - chaotic

  • 'I was brave' - usually associated with soldiers, but for the mother to be brave emphasises the emotional toll on civilians
• 'I traced the inscriptions of the war memorial, leaned against it like a wishbone'

  • Anticipation & anxiety of looking for her son's name

  • 'Like a wishbone' - simile. Supposed to bring good luck - ironic, as her wish for her son's life to be spared not granted. Mother & son like two halves of a wishbone - incomplete without each other, even though they are destined to be ripped apart

  • 'Leaned against' - physically leaning against a solid stone structure, but metaphorically 'like a wishbone' represents her fragility
• STRUCTURE

  • Dramatic monologue - single person gives speech to a silent listener. Mother addressing son, but he is not there, heightening sense of loss

  • Written in free verse - no rhyme or regular rhythm

  • Stanzas are varied in length

  • Enjambements across lines & stanzas

  • Caesura
• COMPARE:

  • War photographer - domestic life

  • Remains - those left behind