Poppies

Question 1

Form

Answer 1

Dramatic monologue, second person narrative to directly address son, however he never replies(“Before you left”)

Question 2

Structure

Answer 2

“Three days before Armistice Sunday”- Temporal deixis establishes the theme of remembrance from the start. By showing the son participating in armistice sunday and then being killed in war himself, the cyclical nature of war is demonstrated.
Free verse - no rhyme scheme or meter and variety in stanza length, shows these are the speakers’ uncensored thoughts, Weir’s use of free verse also creates an impression of the poem being an outpouring of emotion/stream of consciousness
Enjambment - “rolled, turned into felt//slowly melting” gives sentences a fragmented feeling
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 breaking