Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

He was a master of his craft. We sat at his feet in the absolute confidence that we were privileged in having the best. Yes, perhaps the very best.

But this was to be a special occasion. An exhibition display, you might say. A test? For the poet himself was to be present. And the poem a recent one, not yet published and therefore 'virgin’, unappreciated, whole and chaste. Until now. The master had been given the 'droit de seigneur' and the father was to be chief witness.

We arrived, of course, earlier than usual. Many had their set places but there was no trusting a respect for habit on such an unhabitual occasion. Besides, it had been agreed to open our doors to outsiders, the event had been posted up and those arriving only on time would be likely to land up on the floor or tucked into some awkward and obstructed corner. We, the faithful, did not want to miss a single flicker of this grand and spectacular 'illumination'.

The seminar room was quiet. A quick glance screened strangers for motives, origins, and then pigeon-holed them on a seat. Soon they were doing the same, earlier entrants becoming automatically assimilated on the arrival of later ones, till, as the room filled, the collective antipathy with which each newcomer was greeted grew in strength. Hardly anyone spoke. And if they did, the contrasting silence was rebuke enough. When it was time, eyes tried to avoid the door, but its promise was too strong. Disappointed looks disguised themselves quickly with studied vacancy or dived back down into - some slim volume.

Then, an unmistakable voice outside, the door held partly open, a conversation private, concluded, and in they came, he leading, shorter, solid, carefully groomed and with the archaic smile, the other following, tall, all limbs and bones, ill-fitting clothes and painful shyness. No. We were not going to be affected by such crude and chance factors as physical appearance. Our business was reality. But the contrast was startling and might have raised some silly giggles in a less grave environment. Perhaps, we privately mused, as host and guest laboured up to the front, there was some reflected truth in this: those long limbs and bony fingers, the uncut nails, stretching out, reaching out like the web of a spider into the empty spaces, spanning them and so, only so, netting something exotic, unknown, new; and then, below on the ground, squat and compact, ruminative, Buddha-like, the sifter, the chewer, the extractor of the juice, of the essence, who threw up on a magic screen the intricate patterns, the correspondences, the marvel of form, skeletal, perfect, as the prey passed through his digestive tract. Nothing quite as formulated as this, of course, went through our minds. However, we did have to defuse the dangerous humour of the situation, each in his own way and as quickly as he could. But now the poet was safely seated and our man stood stockily surveying the sea of faces in front of him. We, the special ones, were singled out with a little nod and, silently, the home-supporters roared for their team. Well, that's silly: it wasn't a fight; nor even a competition. At least, we didn't think so then.

He introduced the poet. A short biography, terse but telling. An hors d'oeuvre to stimulate the juices. He was very confident. Then an introduction to the specialness of this occasion and the first reference to the actual poem. There was a shuffling of paper as those who had not done so already retrieved and opened the sheet on which the victim lay, spread out in black and white. We had received it a week before and copies had been made available for outsiders. There was a pause. A knife glinted at the high-priest's waist. Then he began.

The poem, on the surface, dealt with insomnia and the various devices employed to overcome it, these becoming ever more complicated till you realized that the whole process was itself a kind of mimicry of sleep and of dreaming but without the benefits. The line between reality and fantasy was purposely smudged. The night seemed to have its own special laws and dominated more and more as the poem progressed. It was dense but not impenetrable and had a rising passion that arose not a little from what was left unsaid, so it seemed. It was moving. But it was not easy to say why.

The master skimmed lightly at first over the work, as graceful as a humming bird. No touching yet. Only the pleasure of anticipation. But the content began nevertheless to glow from within the dark shapelessness. We thought we had glimpses of lungs, heart, liver - tantalizingly brief.

Then suddenly the knife was out. The atmosphere froze. It flashed for a moment only, then fell. And before we had time to focus clearly, a simple pattern of incisions had been made. First blood. The anatomy of the poem now began slowly to yield itself up. Deeper strokes caused the flesh to fold back, revealing to our gaze the brilliant white of the bones. Soon the sheet of paper was a complex mass of intersecting geometric shapes that whirled and span like catherine wheels spitting out alliteration, humming with assonance, sending out in subtle, rhythmic bursts showers of metaphors all the colours of the rainbow ... And finally, when all the parts were identified and delineated, laid out and labelled, there was a moment of quiet. All was still. We were in a great laboratory. The great doctor stood there, masked and majestic. Before him lay the heart, floating in formaldehyde. Could he do the impossible? Could he make these bones live? Then, softly at first, we heard a strange melody begin to play. The doctor's head was bent over in deepest concentration. Did it come from him? We listened. It seemed familiar. Like something known once so well but so long ago. And, as it grew in strength, so it was recognized not only by us but by each of those many dissected parts which were ranged around us in their funeral jars - beginning with the heart. The doctor's eyes shone above his mask. He was calling the soul back to its house. And, obedient to his call, as the music pulsed back through its portals, the heart had begun to beat. Before our unblinking eyes the soul of the poem then summoned each of the parts which had given it form into a mystical dance of resurrection. And they all answered the summons, each in its separate way but all united by their response into one idea. And as the hierophant, the priest and doctor, raised his arms, the idea became once more flesh. The poem was whole. The blood was gone; no jars, no knives, no stitches even. We were as we began except, where there had been darkness, there was now light, where shapelessness, form, where obscurity, clarity. It was a religious experience. That is why there was no applause. Though I am sure that every member of that audience was inwardly standing on his chair and roaring. It was a performance never to be equalled. We felt like weeping. Some did.

And now I must come to the point of all this. I wish I didn't have to. I wish it had ended there at this moment of his greatest triumph. But it didn't and I have sentenced myself to record what then took place.

Well, it was a hard act to follow, as they say. What could you say - after that? I don't think anyone foresaw the danger. The idea of the poet witnessing it all hadn't been thought through in anyone's imagination. I suppose he could have just stood up and said, 'Yes, that was terrific. I was amazed. Yes, he really hit the nail on the head there. A wonderful display ...' And then we could have applauded, to cover the bathos, and all gone home, happy. But the poet probably felt more was expected of him. After all, he was being paid a fee. To listen only?

He stood up and, cocking his large head to one side, fixed an eye on the corner of the ceiling, like a bird watching a fly. You could see he had been moved, like all of us. But now self-consciousness was taking over. Perhaps he had prepared something but now it was forgotten. He began to mumble in clichés the kind of things we wanted to hear, complimentary things: very impressed, most flattering and so on. But he didn't stop there. And suddenly a cold horror seized us: we realized that he was heading inexorably for a 'but'. Long before he reached it we were desperately racking our brains: but what? How could he have any reservations? How could he think to spoil the moment - a poet of all creatures? But we saw the line of the cliff-edge rocking unsteadily nearer. He himself didn't seem to know where he was heading. The initial physical impression we had received which had seemed almost comical returned and was further enhanced by the manner in which he spoke. True to his shape, his words flapped around gawkily like a heron in a lift. He careered into lamp-posts, blundered down cul-de-sacs, raced excitedly up one-way streets with the oncoming traffic flashing madly ... it was grotesque and many of us lowered our heads and closed our eyes in pain and embarrassment. We longed for him to end. We prayed. But he persisted. He seemed obsessed by that 'but’ which he seemed unable to reach but for which he continued to head with a madman's passion. And so he blundered on through all the red lights, snarling up the traffic, a lumbering runaway aeroplane looking for the runway. Then, doubled up in agony, we suddenly sensed, as it were, a wind. We looked up. He was standing there transfixed, but suddenly clear of all obstacles. He hesitated for one second and then, with the joy of a creature who had at last found his native space, he soared up into the blue with all the sudden grace of an albatross.

It was a short flight. But it was enough. For us it was a glimpse into quite another dimension. We gasped for lack of oxygen and, looking back down, everything behind us seemed small and faintly silly. Once back on the ground, we searched the face of our man for some sign that would reassure, that might explain ... The smile was still there but someone had switched off the current. We would have explanations. The moment would be examined carefully, minutely, but never away.

It grew harder over the next months even to meet his eye. And of course that made it worse for him, hastening his decline. It had all had a dreadful inevitability. We were angry. We had been happy before. Now there was only uncertainty, a loss of nerve, the awareness of colossal limitations about which we could do very little - perhaps nothing. A number of us gradually turned to other areas. Some dropped out altogether. I stayed. For that he was sickeningly grateful and together we pretended I did it for the right reason. I showed him some of my own stuff. And, oh, he was complimentary. I tried to take it as such but, looking at those poems again, I'm struck by the massive smokescreen of imagery that they shoot out. Why should I have tried to make the various happenings appear more noteworthy by means of such elaborate imagery if I was not trying to hide a vacuum?

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