Ten Things You Didn't Know About Poppies

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Here are ten things you may not know about the poppy, worn on Remembrance Day.

1.  One 19th Century writer remarked that the poppy seemed to sprout freely on the barren ground where battles were previously fought.

2.  In 1915, Lt.-Col. John McRae noticed that the blood-red flower was growing in a cemetery in Ypres where it had never previously grown.  Hence, he wrote the poem "In Flanders Fields".

3.  The bombing runs and rubble of World War I had caused the soil to become chalky, making it conducive to growing poppies.

4.  In 1918, New Yorker Moina Michael read "In Flanders Fields" and started wearing a poppy to commemorate all of the soldiers who died in World War I and other wars.

5.  Moina Michael's poppy was spotted by a French visitor who took the idea back to her home country and started selling poppies to raise money for poor children.

6.  In 1921, the poppy spread to Canada where it serves to remember our soldiers and raise money for them.

7.  While it is respectful to wear a poppy in the days leading up to Remembrance Day, one should not wear the symbol after November 11.  The poppy is supposed to be placed on the grave of a veteran or at the site of a ceremony dedicated to veterans.

8.  In 1980, Canada started selling poppies with a green centre to reflect the green of the battlfields.  However, in 2002 someone realized that poppies are really black in the centre and they reverted to the true colour.

9.  Poppies should be worn on the left lapel of a garment, close to the heart.

10.  During the Napoleonic Wars, the poppy bloomed on the graves of fallen soldiers.

Source:  www.citynews.ca

Queen Elizabeth walks through a sea of poppies courtesy http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/11/04/world/century-start-world-war-poppy-lives-potent-symbol/.

The Rondeau's Renaissance

The rondeau is a form of Medieval and Renaissance poetry which originated in France.  The poem is 15 lines long and follows a rhyming scheme of:  aabbaR--aabR--aabbaR.  Thomas Wyatt brought the rondeau to England in the 15th Century.  Paul Laurence Dunbar reintroduced the form in the 19th and 20th Century.  One of the most popular rondeaus in history is "In Flanders Fields", the World War I poem written by Dr. John McCrae.  Here is one of Paul Lauren Dunbar's rondeaus, We Wear the Mask:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,

This debt we pay to human guile

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask.

http://fantasticvoyagesunlimited.com/2013/01/31/we-wear-the-mask-that-grins-and-lies/

Here is the rondeau, On Prussian Plains, that I wrote for Rob's Oma, about the invasion of East Prussia toward the end of the Second World War:

On Prussian plains she works the land;

She plants the seeds and crops by hand.

Babe in a basket by her side,

A girl in braids goes for a ride

While her brave soldier fights so grand.

The war goes not as Prussia planned.

Her friends all flee by sea or land;

But she remains and plans to hide

On Prussian plains.

The Russian soldiers seize her land;

Force her to roam with babes in hand.

She begs for food, but is denied.

Then comes the news her husband died.

They even take her wedding band

On Prussian plains.

http://justice4germans.com/third-reich/