Big Poppy Literary Elements

A first-person speaker: initially singular, plural in the final three stanzas.

free verse, 11 stanzas which contain between 1 and 3 lines

"Hot-eyed Mafia Queen!"
In the first line, the speaker likens the poppy to a queen.

"...her drunken, fractured goblet."
The speaker uses the metaphor of a cracked goblet to describe the shape of the poppy's petals.

"...the royal carpet of a down-hung,/ Shrivel-edged, unhinged petal..."
The poppy's first, drooping petal is compared to a royal carpet.

"carnival paper skirts"
The poppy's petals are compared to a woman's skirts as the bee revels in the flower's center.

"Coffin—(cradle of her offspring)"
The seed pod that will grow, causing the poppy to shed her petals, is called the poppy's coffin.

"...that stripped, athletic leg, hairy"
The poppy's stem is compared to a woman's leg.

"Embrace him helplessly"
Repetition of "h" and "s"

"She wore herself in hair, in her day"
Repetition of "h"

"Her big, lewd, bold eye, in its sooty lashes"
Repetition of "b" and "u" sounds

modern poetry, nature poetry

a garden, the center of a poppy flower

lusty, unaffected, funereal

The poppy is the protagonist, the major antagonist is time

Although the bee struggles to reach the poppy's center, the poem's main conflict is not between the bee and the flower, but between the poppy and time. We are told twice that the poppy "sways" towards her demise, first in line 3 and then again in 8. As the poppy and the bee embrace, the poppy's pod is "already" growing, which means the poppy's petals will soon fall. At the end, the speaker anticipates the way the poppy will be remembered, before her first petal has fallen.

The poem's climax occurs in line 15, when the speaker mentions the "cool" fly resting on the poppy's petal. Reality offsets the heat of the moment: instead of narrating the present moment, the speaker anticipates the poppy's death and rememberance.

In line 17, the speaker says that the poppy will wither "into vestal afterlife" when she sheds her petals, subtly alluding to the Roman goddess Vesta, whose temple was tended by "vestal" virgins. As her pod swells, the poppy will be forced into chastity.

"Big Poppy" is filled with personification. The bee and the poppy are personified as a man and woman engaged in a sexual affair. The poppy's anatomy is also likened to female anatomy; her petals are hair, her dark center is an eye, and her stem is a leg.

At the end of the poem, the speaker amplifies the poppy's appearance when he imagines the way she will be remembered, for her "huge flop of petal," her "big, lewd, bold eye, in its sooty lashes," and her "stripped, athletic leg."

In line 5, as the bee struggles to reach the center of the poppy, the word "clambers" evokes the sound of someone ambling awkwardly, knocking over whatever stands in his path. The bee's "Sizzling bleats" are another example of onomatopoeia.