Very melancholic and sorrow filled poem “Red Poppy” by Tess Gallagher puts the reader in a very secluded place (hillside with ponies and silk prayer flags) and draws strong images of eternal sleep (which is symbolized by the poppy flower and its blood red color - death or blood.) Gallagher actually depicts in this poem how she feels the death approaching that eternal sleep drawing near “when the poppy lets go I know it is to lay bare/ his thickly seeded black coach/ at the pinnacle of dying.”
Than we are taken off to that pinnacle of dying by the vivid image that might be ambiguous to readers, but it appears to be the hillside where Buddhist prayer flags are snapping in the wind, and ponies with bells braided into their manes uninterrupted graze in the hills, and blue skies with white peaks are in the distance (Gallagher) this not only visually takes the reader out of the hospital room into a melancholic tundra, but also lets the readers hear the quiet faint sounds and feel the wind that’s causing the flags to snap in the wind.
We can deduce from the most gentle and caring way Tess speaks of her beloved husband how she misses him, how painful and cherished the last seconds of his life were to her. We see that her love was so strong that she can only sum it up in two words her life was “for him”! This poem made me realize that there are still those who can love so strongly and so purely. This poem is similar to “Black Valentine” in that they both depict Gallagher’s husband’s death or dying. She was gravely affected by his passing, besides the obvious reasons another would be – he encouraged her to write (poetryfoundation.org) Also the title is somewhat ambiguous and might mislead some people, yet poppies always stood for death and sleep, poppies often appear on tombstones as a symbol of eternal slumber (Wikipedia.org) hence the meaning of this poem’s title.
It seems to me it is more optimistic and less gloomy than “Black Valentine” but both were copyrighted in 1992 about 6 years after Raymond’s death (poets.org & poetryfoundation.org) May be because they reflect somewhat differing states of grief.
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You're on target, here--the flowers as metaphor for death and grief, and the relationship between life and death--follow some of this through the poem's imagery, the way the red of the poppy is the red of life blood, and metonymically the "scarlet" of "last of warmth," etc. A red (slant rhyming with "bed") of both full bloom and nearness of death. Hard October apples. Not sure about the Buddhist flag; there is a "Bedouin god" imaged in the first stanza (desert wanderer, apropo), though looking into the void could be a Buddhist gesture
ReplyDeleteYou are right Professor! She does relate to the Bedouin god, and now that i read a bit about Bedouins I see how the horses come into it "...Bedouin story states that Allah created the Arabian horse from the four winds" (Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry)I shall analyze this deeper (It has been a somewhat challenging poem to interpret, requiring me to use external sources to understand some of the metaphors)
ReplyDeleteAlso, see my comments on Margarita's blog.
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