Big Poppy Analysis

Form and Meter

The poem, on the page, doesn't seem to really follow any pre-set pattern of any kind. The stanzas range from one to three lines a piece, and the line lengths run the gamut from four to thirteen syl...

Speaker

Our speaker is really enthusiastic about flowers. Or at least this particular flower. You might be able to picture him, sitting at the edge of the garden mentioned in the poem, just enraptured by t...

Setting

The setting for most of this poem is fairly static – since the entire piece is a meditation on a plant, and plants don't typically get up and walk away from you, we're in once physical place...

Sound Check

Despite all the adjective-piling that we talk about in the "Calling Card" section of this analysis, this poem is actually full of pauses and shorter sentences. A lot of the lines are end-stopped, w...

What's Up With the Title?

The title is relatively self-explanatory, here – the poem is singularly focused on a poppy, and so "Big Poppy" seems like an apt title. But why not just "Poppy" or maybe "The Poppy"? In keepi...

Calling Card

So usually, adjectives are kind of a last go-to for poets. Adjectives and adverbs are almost always pegged as weaker parts of speech than nouns and verbs, because they don't actually refer to anyth...

Tough-O-Meter

Although you might need to do a bit of a Google Image search for pictures of poppies in order to get the whole thing into your head visually, this poem doesn't really do anything too crazy in terms...

Brain Snacks

Sex Rating

This poem is all about sex. But wait, you say! There are no people in this poem! How could it possibly be all about sex? Well, let's just put it this way – if we could actually turn the flowe...