2.4.10 Poppies

Question 1

Poet

Answer 1

Jane Weir

Question 2

Theme Code

Answer 2

KCQ-FILES

Question 3

Themes

Answer 3

Identity, Effects of Conflict, Bravery, Memory, Negative Emotion of Fear, Individual Experience, Loss and Absence, Conflict on Domestic Life

Question 4

Quotes

Answer 4

• ‘I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade, of yellow bias’
• ‘I wanted to graze my nose… across the tip of your nose’
• ‘the world overflowing… like a treasure chest’
• ‘A single dove’
• ‘hat-less, without… a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.
• ‘I listened, hoping to hear… your playground voice’

Question 5

Main Structural Points

Answer 5

• Enjambment
• Dramatic Monologue

Question 6

Explain the quote ‘hat-less, without a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.’

Answer 6

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Lack of winter clothes resembles her lack of warmth from her son and yet again the use of ‘reinforcements’ using a military reference while at home.

Question 7

Explain the quote ‘I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
of yellow bias’

Answer 7

Asyndentic Listing and Military References
Asyndentic Listing and the use of ‘crimpled’ remembering its physical shape shows she has a vivid memory of this occasion.
She’s describing pinning a poppy onto his blazer’s lapel. But the use of ‘spasm’ is a word of injury and makes us the reader think of pain and suffering. And ‘blockade’ is a war-related word, meaning to isolate and close off a place guarded by troops to prevent entrance and exit. Weir is blending a domestic image with one of war, which reflects how the mother is seeing the ideas of suffering in everyday life.

Question 8

Quotes for the Main Structural Point

Answer 8

• ‘All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt… slowly melting’

Question 9

Simplified Main Structural Point

Answer 9

It’s free verse so chaotic structure. The dramatic monologue focuses on the mother’s pain rather than the son’s. The enjambment that causes the sentence to flow onto the next line causes a break mirroring the break of emotions the mother feels. Conflict also affects the ones at home.

Question 10

Main Structural Point

Answer 10

Weir chose to write ‘Poppies’ as free verse resulting in no rhyme scheme or poetic metre, to add to that the stanzas are all of the different lengths, this gives the poem a chaotic and uncontrolled structure reflecting the mother of the soldier, she is unable to control her emotions she feels towards her son because of conflict. The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, we the reader are in the perspective of the mother. This emphasises the pain felt by the often ignored mother. We the reader do not consider the soldier, we are thinking about the ones left behind and how they feel and are affected by conflict and this clearly represented by the dramatic monologue form that does not consider the solider and emphasises the mother’s pain and that her son is either at war or he is dead. This outburst of emotion that is ‘overflowing like a treasure chest’ is clearly presented by the use of enjambment and caesura in the poem. ‘All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt… slowly melting’ this sentence is separated by enjambment, but it does not just continue onto the next line, it continues onto the next stanza. Jane Weir once said ‘if one is to grieve, at some point, let it dissolve’. The structure here breaks and the breaking in the structure reflects how the mother is breaking emotionally, emphasised by the stanza break within a sentence. The lack of rhyme and rhythm combined with caesura and enjambment while being written as a dramatic monologue creates this effect of uncontrollability and chaos which mirror the feelings of the mother after her son goes to war, conflict affects the ones at not only war, but also the ones at home.