poppies Flashcards
context
- written to commemorate 50 yrs since end of WW1
- runs textile business influences of her broad cultural experiences as well as her knowledge of and interest in other art forms can be seen throughout her work.
Jane weir background
born 1963, grew up in Italy and Northern England, with English mother and Italian father. continued to absorb different cultural experiences throughout life
form
poem appears to have strong, regular sense of form. four clear stanzas, the first and last with six lines, the second with 11 and the third 12.
careful variation in form suggests the inner emotion of a narrator who is trying to remain calm and composed but is breaking with sadness inside.
structure
time sequence keeps changing along with her emotions. It goes from “Three days before” (line 1) to “Before you left” (line 3) to “After you’d gone” (line 23) to “later” (line 25) and the present in “this is where it has led me” on line 26. It ends with her suspended, on the hill, between the present and the past.
language
colour and texture of poppies is expressed through powerful language in the first stanza. detailed description of the blazer emphasised through alliteration “bias binding… blazer”. feel the closeness between mother and child the moment she kneels to pin poppy to lapel. words such as “spasms”, “disrupting” and “blockade” however, she may be also recalling the violence of his death.
imagery
sense of her blocking out memory of his violent death with a sweeter, purer memory is sustained in the second stanza: “Sellotape bandaged around my hand”. This image carries echoes of battlefield injury as well as cleaning the cat hairs off the blazer.
metaphor and symbolism
The door to the house is the door to the world. The song-bird is a metaphor for the mother setting the child free. This then changes into the dove, the symbol of peace – but here the peace the son has found is only the peace of death.
