Poppies Flashcards
(13 cards)
Form and structure:
Free verse, uneven stanzas: Mirrors her uncontrolled, fragmented thoughts.
Enjambment/caesura: Suggests emotional turmoil and faltering speech (e.g., “I listened, hoping to hear / your playground voice”).
Form: Dramatic monologue (free verse with enjambment and caesura).
Comparisons:
Kamikaze
Emigree
Remains
War photographer
Themes:
Loss,Memory
“All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt”.
Metaphor + Rule of Three: Shows her grief renders her speechless; “felt” implies muffled, stifled emotions.
“Released a songbird from its cage”
Symbolism: The mother accepting her son’s independence (freedom to join war), despite her fear.
“the world overflowing / like a treasure chest”.
Contrasts her son’s excitement (adventure) with her dread (loss).
“I traced the inscriptions on the war memorial, leaned against it like a wishbone.”
Tactility: “I traced the inscriptions” shows longing for connection.
Metaphor: “leaned against it like a wishbone” implies fragility and unresolved hope.
Climbing the hill is a metaphor for her struggle to deal with the grief of sending her son to war.
The wishbone is a visual image that hints for her wish for his safety.
Ideas of the war memorial being tangible unlike her wishes and memories
Writer’s purpose
To give voice to silenced women – Weir wanted to highlight the often-overlooked grief of mothers and families left behind in war.
To explore the emotional cost of war – The poem focuses on a mother’s pain rather than battlefield heroism, challenging traditional war narratives.
To evoke empathy – By using a dramatic monologue, Weir directly engages the reader in the mother’s sorrow, making the personal impact of war more relatable.
To reflect on loss and memory – The poem’s ambiguity (whether the son died) universalizes themes of mourning and remembrance.
Compare the ways poets present attitudes to war in ‘Poppies’ and in one other
poem from ‘Power and Conflict’
- Personal vs. Societal Consequences of War
Both Poppies and Kamikaze explore how war devastates individuals, but they differ in their focus. In Poppies, the mother’s grief is intensely personal, conveyed through intimate domestic imagery like “the shirt’s upturned collar” and “steeled the softening of my face,” which highlight her struggle to maintain composure. Her sorrow is private, unresolved, and symbolized by the “spasms of paper red” poppies—a stark contrast to their traditional celebratory meaning. In Kamikaze, the consequences are societal; the pilot’s decision to abandon his mission leads to his ostracization (“no longer the father we loved”), illustrating how cultural expectations enforce conformity. While Poppies emphasizes internal suffering, Kamikaze exposes the external pressures that punish those who defy wartime ideologies. - Natural Imagery as a Contrast to War
The poems use nature to underscore war’s destructiveness, but with different emphases. In Poppies, the mother’s memory of her son’s “playground voice” and the “songbird released from its cage” symbolize lost innocence and stifled freedom, framing war as an unnatural rupture of domestic life. Kamikaze, however, employs vivid natural imagery—”green-blue translucent sea” and “tuna, the dark prince”—to represent life’s allure, which ultimately convinces the pilot to reject his suicide mission. Here, nature triumphs over the “powerful incantations” of militaristic dogma. While Poppies uses nature to evoke nostalgia and fragility, Kamikaze wields it as a subversive force against war’s dehumanization. - Structural Techniques and Narrative Perspective
Both poems use form to mirror their themes, but their structural choices diverge. Poppies’ free verse and enjambment (“I listened, hoping to hear / your playground voice”) reflect the mother’s disjointed grief and inability to reconcile her son’s absence. The lack of rhyme or rhythm mirrors her emotional chaos. Kamikaze, meanwhile, shifts between third-person narration and the daughter’s voice, a technique that underscores the pilot’s fractured identity and the family’s conflicted loyalty. The poem’s irregular line lengths and figurative language (e.g., the “figure of eight” as infinity) contrast with Poppies’ flowing, unpunctuated lines. Where Poppies immerses the reader in raw emotion, Kamikaze employs narrative distance to critique cultural complicity. Both, however, reject traditional war poetry’s grandeur, instead amplifying marginalized voices.
Comparisons with Remains:
- Effects of Conflict
Poppies:
Shows indirect consequences—a mother’s grief and helplessness as her son leaves for war.
Metaphor: “All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt” → Conflict silences families.
Remains:
Depicts direct trauma—a soldier haunted by killing a looter (“his bloody life in my bloody hands”).
Graphic imagery: “Then I’m home on leave… but he’s here in my head” → PTSD’s lingering violence.
Comparison: Both reveal war’s scars, but Poppies focuses on homefront suffering, while Remains exposes battlefield guilt. - Powerful Memories
Poppies:
Nostalgic, sensory memories: “hoping to hear / your playground voice” → Clings to childhood innocence.
War memorial symbolizes unresolved loss (“leaned against it like a wishbone”).
Remains:
Invasive, violent memories: “sleep, and he’s probably armed, possibly not” → Flashbacks blur past/present.
Repetition of “probably” shows paranoia.
Comparison: Poppies uses tender memories to highlight absence; Remains uses brutal memories to show psychological imprisonment. - Negative Feelings
Poppies:
Ambiguous grief: Uncertainty if son died (“war memorial” hints at death) → Mothers’ anxiety.
Simile: “like a treasure chest” contrasts her fear with son’s excitement.
Remains:
Explicit guilt/shame: “his bloody life in my bloody hands” (alliteration emphasizes self-disgust).
Colloquial tone (“Then I’m home on leave”) contrasts with horror → Soldier’s numbness.
Comparison: Poppies conveys quiet sorrow; Remains spirals into aggressive self-loathing.
Theme of Memory
In Poppies, memory is an act of love and mourning. The mother’s recollections are fragile and sensory, filled with tactile details like “crimped petals” and “the gelled / blackthorns of your hair.” The free verse and enjambment mimic her emotional fragmentation, as she struggles to hold onto moments before her son’s departure. The closing image, “released a song bird from its cage,” suggests memory is both a comfort and a release—something she clings to but cannot contain. Here, memory is tender yet agonizing, a testament to loss rather than a means of control.
Theme of Effects of Conflict
In Poppies, Jane Weir explores the devastating emotional effects of conflict on those left behind, focusing on a mother’s grief as her son departs for war. The poem’s intimate, domestic imagery—”smoothed down your shirt’s upturned collar”—captures her attempt to maintain composure while masking profound vulnerability. The extended metaphor of the songbird (“released a songbird from its cage”) symbolizes both her son’s freedom and her own helplessness, as war ruptures their bond. Weir’s use of enjambment and caesura mirrors the mother’s fractured emotions, shifting between memories (“playground voice”) and the unbearable present. Unlike traditional war poems glorifying sacrifice, Poppies exposes conflict’s silent, lingering trauma, emphasizing personal loss over heroism. The final image of the “war memorial” draped in poppies—ironically impersonal—highlights how public remembrance fails to console private anguish.
Theme of Nature
In Poppies, Jane Weir uses subtle natural imagery to underscore the contrast between the destructive forces of war and the enduring resilience of life. The songbird released from its cage (“I released a songbird from its cage”) serves as a powerful metaphor for both the son’s departure and the mother’s reluctant acceptance of his freedom, while also symbolizing fragile hope amidst loss. The poppies themselves—traditionally associated with remembrance—are described with organic, almost violent imagery (“spasms of paper red”), suggesting how nature’s symbols are co-opted and distorted by war. The mother’s memory of her son’s “playground voice” evokes a past connected to innocence and natural growth, now severed by conflict. Unlike poems that depict nature as overpowering (e.g., Kamikaze’s sea), Weir’s natural references are domesticated and muted, mirroring how war encroaches on private, tender spaces. Ultimately, nature in Poppies becomes a silent witness to human suffering, its fragility echoing the mother’s unspoken grief.
