Carol Rumens's poem of the weekLouise Glück This article is more than 2 years oldPoem of the week: The Red Poppy by Louise Glück
This article is more than 2 years oldThis poem by the Nobel laureate is a fierce short parable about environmental devastation
The Red Poppy
The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
This week’s poem first appeared in Louise Glück’s 1992 volume, The Wild Iris, one of the 12 collections included in a resplendent edition, Poems 1962-2020, newly published as a Penguin Classic.
In a review of The Wild Iris by Stephanie Burt, there is a striking sentence: “People, for Glück, are not the animals that reason, but the plants that cannot know what flowers to bear.” In The Red Poppy, the relation of plant and human is emphasised, especially by the question at the core of the poem: “Oh my brothers and sisters, / were you like me once, long ago, / before you were human?” The series of questions of which this is part assumes evolutionary connections: humans and plants are siblings, sharing a common ancestor.
The poppy, like some of the other flowers she describes, issues a challenge to the fallen humans who somehow continue to inhabit the space from which they are excluded. It begins with a startling assertion – startling partly because of its informal idiom and the suggestion that it belongs to a conversation already begun: “The great thing / is not having / a mind.” Although the human(s) in the conversation make no audible response, the poppy goes on to talk about “feelings” as if an interlocutor had made the suggestion: “OK, you’re against having a mind but what about having emotions?”
The poppy’s whole style of speech is indicative of emotions. When it declares “Oh I have those; they / govern me” we’re not inclined to disagree. But those emotions are not straightforward.
The poppy’s metaphysical experience of being completely open to the sun, its “lord”, is central. This is an emotional openness, established in the heart: “showing him / the fire of my own heart, fire / like his presence” but it’s more than that. The poppy mirrors the sun and presents this “lord” with his reflected image. The red poppy has become the sun’s physical counterpart – in theological terms, it is created in God’s image.
Last and profoundest of the poppy’s questions is one which seems, superficially, to be related to time. “Did you permit yourselves / to open once, who would never / open again?” There’s a measuring, perhaps, of the brevity of a single blossom’s season against the length and complexity opportunity allotted the human animal. There’s also the likelihood that the flower’s act of openness and sun-worship is so intense that it is at the same time a self-sacrifice. The poppy, in particular, is a flower that doesn’t last long after its petals have flared fully open to sunlight and fertilisation.
In the end, the poppy confirms destruction as the source of its mastery of speech. “Because in truth / I am speaking now / the way you do. I speak / because I am shattered.” The unhappy transformation is a reminder of the fallen state of when they separate themselves from other living but speechless entities and interpose language in a way that renders shared experience unattainable. By giving the poppy a monologue, the poet has given the plant both speech and a mind but, the poppy says, in doing so, she has merely created another “human”.
The Red Poppy may be read as a “religious” poem, but its force for me is as a fierce short parable about environmental depredation. At the same time, the voice is thoroughly realised, lively and impassioned. It’s one of the best “poppy poems” in the literature of this emblematic flower.
Louise Glück has won numerous awards, including the 2020 Nobel prize in literature. Her prose poem A Work of Fiction was a Poem of the week in August, 2014.
This article was amended on 25 August to correct the scientific inaccuracy of saying human began as plants. Discussion below fills out the background.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJqfpLi0e5FpaWpnkaq0cH6SaKeonZ1ivKd506GcZq%2BVmrhuwMeeZKudlGK9sLzPsmSbsV2hvLa10p5koKSlmLg%3D