poppies

• jane weir presents a mother'd grief is explored to reveal the unconventional victims of conflict as contextually weir has two sons which may have influenced her desire to explore what caused young boys to go to war and fight
• poppies grew in battlefields and became a symbol of remembrance in 1921, Armistice Sunday also became a way to remember WW2, therefore weir uses these symbols to establish the poem as an act of remembrance
• 'three days before Armistice Sunday' - this use of temporal deixis establishes the theme of remembrance from the start
• 'i pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer' - the use of asyndetic listing shows how detailed the memory is to the narrator
• ' i wanted to graze my nose'

  'graze' - the word choice implies that the memory also has painful undertones
• 'it opens, the world overflowing like a treasure chest' - this metaphor creates an image of there being an outpouring of emotion by the narrator
• ' i listened, hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind' - the poem ends with sad metaphor
• ' after you'd gone i went into your bedroom, released a song bird from its cage' - the use of bird imagery depicts the son to have high energy about war, which is all due to the new freedom to do what he pleases as well as the influence of propaganda on young minds
• the opening of the poem sets the tone of remembrance from the start, further weir sets the scene of the poem at a memorial service to show the reader that the speaker and her son, who made the ultimate sacrifice, are victims of war
• the form of the poem is dramatic monologue and the speaker person narrative to directly address their son however, he never replies, implying that he is no longer there which creates a sense of death and loss
• structure of the poem is there is free verse - no rhyme scheme or meter as well as a lot of variety in stanza length, this shows that these are the speakers uncensored thoughts through which she desperately tries to make sense of the situation
• weir's use of free verse also create the impression of the poem being an outpouring of emotion or a stream of consciousness and the chaotic structure of the poem reflects the narrator's lack of control over her emotions as well as the events she has endured and shows that they chaos created by war is much further reaching than the battlefield
• weir's use of enjambement gives the sentences a fragmented feeling and this alludes to the narrator having a grasp at incomplete memories
• weir interweaves domestic imagery with violent military metaphors throughout the poem and this is evident when the speaker describes leaving the house and the lack fo protection from the cold shows how violence has left a mark on all parts of her everyday life, this further implies that she feels she needs reinforcement to face seeing the memorial for her son as it is still difficult to face the reality of her situation
• the speaker remembers wanting to 'graze my nose across the tip of your nose' which maternal affection is juxtaposed against the injury-like connotation of 'graze' and throughout the poem, weir shows how war prevents people from having a normal domestic life
• weir is unusual as a war poet in the way in which she explores emotional suffering as opposed to physical pain and this is evident in the speaker's declaration of ' i was brave ' which opposes conventional ideas of bravery associated with fighting and risk taking
• in 'poppies', the narrator is acting bravely by carrying on with her daily life despite what she is suffering and the narrator is also brave becausse despite her fear of losing her son to war, she still lets him go
• the use of enjambment between stanzas in 'all my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt // slowly melting' breaks the structure of the poem to correspond with the mother emotionally break and hints of the mother's suffering are heard throughout the poem as she is repeatedly assaulted by painful memories