3 h 17 minAudiobook5 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does a red poppy carry beyond remembrance?
In Flanders Fields, and Other Poems brings together the verse of John McCrae, a Canadian doctor and soldier. His title poem takes you to wartime Belgium, where poppies grow between crosses. Its three stanzas give remembrance a lasting image, while its returning refrain draws the dead and the living close.
Around that poem, McCrae explores death, duty, courage and rest. The Anxious Dead imagines the fallen waiting and asking about the fight above them. Other poems turn toward earlier battles or quiet reflection. Alongside the verse, his friend Sir Andrew Macphail offers a portrait of the man whose life joins medicine, military service and poetry.
What you’ll discover
- The poppy and remembrance Meet the short poem that gives the red poppy its place in remembrance.
- Words that return Follow the rondeau's returning opening words, and hear how a refrain holds your attention.
- Questions from the fallen Read The Anxious Dead, where those below ask about the struggle still unfolding above.
- Beyond the Great War Move from poems about the Great War to earlier battles and moments of quiet reflection.
- Verse to read aloud Let short lines and plain rhymes carry you through poems of duty, courage and rest.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love war poetry, remembrance verse, short lyrics on death and rest, or the life stories of writers who also served as doctors and soldiers.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A doctor, a soldier and a poet
- The title poem was written under fire
- Soldiers, ships and battles in verse
- Poems of rest, comfort and the end of day
- Love, doubt and the world's goodness
- The man behind the poems, in Macphail's essay
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- 15-minute summary
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Flanderns Felder und andere Gedichte
by John McCrae · 1919
A doctor at a field dressing station writes about poppies, crosses and larks while shells fall around him.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A doctor sits in a hole at the foot of a canal bank in Flanders, treating the wounded while larks sing above the guns. Out of that moment comes one of the best-known poems of the First World War.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A doctor, a soldier and a poet
John McCrae was a physician, an artillery officer and a poet, and this book shows all three. It holds about thirty poems dated from 1894 to 1917, followed by an essay on his life by Sir Andrew Macphail. The title poem comes first.
Half the poems first appeared in the University Magazine of Montreal, which Macphail edited. McCrae sent his poems there for years before the war. The famous poem went instead to the English magazine Punch, where it appeared without a signature in December 1915.
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What is In Flanders Fields about?
It is spoken by the dead soldiers buried among the poppies of Flanders. They ask the living to carry on the fight and to keep faith with them. The poem has fifteen lines and a repeated closing refrain.
Who wrote In Flanders Fields and when?
John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, wrote it in 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres. It appeared without his name in the magazine Punch in December 1915. He died in 1918.
Why are poppies in the poem?
Poppies grew among the graves in Flanders, and Macphail notes that the poppy is a symbol of sleep. The flowers stand for the rest the dead long for and for the grief that remains.
The author
John McCrae
1872–1918 · Canadian poet and physician
John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, in 1872. He worked as a physician and served as a soldier during the First World War. He wrote the poem “In Flanders Fields” in 1915. He died in Wimereux, France, in 1918. His collected poems were published after his death.
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