Poppies in July
Poppies in July - context Summary
Published in Ariel, 1965
Published posthumously in Ariel (1965), "Poppies in July" stages a speaker confronting bright red poppies as both alluring and tormenting. The poem links vivid color to a desire for numbness or oblivion—bleeding, sleep, and opiates—reflecting Sylvia Plath’s known emotional turmoil. Rather than consoling, the flowers intensify the speaker’s isolation and exhaustion, ending in a bleak, colorless resignation that echoes Plath’s personal struggles.
Read Complete AnalysesLittle poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth. A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts! There are fumes I cannot touch. Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules? If I could bleed, or sleep! - If my mouth could marry a hurt like that! Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule, Dulling and stilling. But colorless. Colorless.
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