Addendum to previous post: Interestingly, apart from the increasing physical recession, there is another thought structure going on in the poem Poppies in July. It is the methods of suicide: death by burning, a wound, and a drug.
Of the three, burning is the most, so to speak, physically involving mode of suicide, the most painful. Slitting a wrist involves comparatively less effort and a shorter duration of pain. A drug overdose is the most passive way of dying.
It's the poppies which make her think of all these things. And so, as her physical recession increases, she increasingly desires a more passive death.
Sylvia Plath tried killing herself by an overdose of sleeping pills in her youth, but was saved. Perhaps in the last days of her life, she was contemplating which method would prove flawlessly fatal.
And she found out.
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