Therapy

I read psychology books (see my Psychology, Psychiatry and Writers Groups article), so I'm not surprised that the subject creeps into my poems. Do you trust your memory? Are you dreaming? Have you been hypnotised? Do you know why you do things? Does it matter?

When Robert Crawford accepted this for Verse magazine he asked me to send some more poems, but he replied saying something like "Let's stick with 'Therapy'".

The fall

This isn't an Edenic fall. Evolution is more the guiding principle. The poem soon comments on the development of languages, then we realise that an english person is intellectualising the loss of their american lover, tracing back to the original rift. The conclusion tidily brings together differences between the two cultures and languages.

Thames

More on the theme of how life becomes art and vice versa. This was published in "Stand". While reading stanza 1 it becomes clear that the scene is contrived - a painting maybe. In stanza 2 the empire appears. Then other art works are mentioned, the scene becomes a painting and the city re-possesses it.

Giraffe

This wasn't meant to be complicated - it's not something with a message, something whose whole is meant to be more than the sum of its parts. Light verse, according to some definitions. It's just a string of metaphors about a Giraffe, not a woman. Martian, if you want. I think the metaphors are pretty apt.

Sunday in the Egyptian gallery

"ceremonies of preservation" are also in "The King", "Imagination", etc. Preservation (or rendering in words/paint) inevitably involves a change of format - simplification, choosing what to omit. The persona here seems to be accepting the sacrifices involved in preserving a memory, not wanting the complications of the living person. The feeling seems mutual. It's time to move on.

Windmills

An article with a little twist at the end? A what-if conspiracy theory? Light verse? Well maybe. Windmills are humanised, become part of our history, our fate. The Mondrian paintings become successively more abstract until the original windmill is barely discernable. Shades of Dr Who.

Touch

I used to cycle to work along a towpath, so maybe this has some basis in fact.
I sometimes say of others' collections that the simpler poems help me decide how much effort to put into the harder poems. If the supposedly "simple but strong" poems are just simple, then the other poems might be bluffing, and might not be worth the effort. I think I'd prefer to be judged by "Paradox" or "He understands but he doesn't love", but this poem's ok. Given the information that a swan will only let itself be touched if it's very poorly, then this poem strikes me as a standard development of that idea. Why doesn't the persona want to react at the end? I don't think the poet need have known. My guess is that proximity to mortality has affected his sensitivity to touch. Swans are heavy beasts; a dead sparrow doesn't have the same effect.