Gentil coquelicot !

Jane Baile dit :

For the English students:
May 25th was Memorial Day in the United States. Did you know that the symbol of the red poppy comes from two poems? One written by John McCrae, a Canadian soldier and physician who witnessed the war first hand and was inspired to write the now-famous poem “In Flanders Fields” in 1915. He saw the poppies scattered throughout the battlefield surrounding his artillery position in Belgium.
In November 1918, days before the official end of the war, an American professor named Moina Michael wrote her own poem, “We Shall Keep the Faith,” which was inspired by McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.” In her poem, she mentioned wearing the “poppy red” to honor the dead, and with that, the tradition of adorning one’s clothing with a single red poppy in remembrance of those killed in the Great War was born. Moina herself came to be known—and honored—as “The Poppy Lady.”
This year my students learned about Memorial Day and in November we’ll look at these two poems.