This poem is clearly paired with “Mother any distance…” as it has the speaker’s father as its subject. In common with the poem about his mother, this is a tripartite poem that is a fifteen line sonnet. Its three stanzas chart a memory of having an ear pierced and then the time, years later, when he decided to take the earring out.
The conversational tone of this poem is in keeping with the familiar struggle between fathers and sons as the son grows up and tries to assert his own identity. The opening line is written in the first person in the voice of the speaker recalling his father’s word in a way that make it very easy to hear him uttering the words himself:
“My father thought bloody queer,
The day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear”
We can hear the father’s voice very clearly even through the reported speech relayed by the speaker. There is also a very clear sense of the father’s disdain and the emphatic “bloody queer” tells us that at the very lest he thought it very odd but also a sign that his son was gay. These days, earrings are commonly worn by men but the generation of men to which the speaker’s father belongs generally sees such fashions as effeminate, to say the least. In lines 3-5 the speaker quotes his father directly, who sarcastically tells him he should have had the ring through his nose to be led like an ass.
The second stanza captures very well the nervousness of all of us when we really want to do something daring in order to become part of a gang but do not quite have the courage to go through with what would be a self-styled initiation or rite of passage because, as is so often the case in circumstances lie this, it will involve real pain or danger. Armitage plays with the idea of a sleeper (a ring used to keep the hole in the earlobe open so that other rings may be interchanged with it) and the act of sleeping, as if lying in wait. The fact that the “hole became a sore, became a wound and wept” (line 11) implies emotional outpouring, as well the primary meaning of leaking pus.
The passage of time between the suppurating experience of the septic ear and the decision “At twenty-nine” to remove the ring leaves the reader wondering of the sore wept for all this time. This leads one to read the poem at this point as reflecting upon the long lasting friction between father and son as the machismo of the former leaves the latter still looking for an identity but defeated by the infection of the earlobe and, in a sense, capitulating to his father’s emphatic advice that has more threat in its tone than friendly exhortation:
”If I were you,
I’d take it out and leave it out next year.”
Armitage’s choice of italics rather than the speech marks he employed to indicate the father’s words earlier in the poem suggests that he may be presenting the italicised section as an utterance of the speaker that is also a memory of the father’s words that erupt into the son’s consciousness and are spoken by him, compounding the fact that he has left his rebelliousness behind and slipped into conventional ways of dress. He becomes like his father by using his words in what seems to be an inevitable change:
“it come as no surprise to hear
my own voice breaking like a tear, released like water,
cried from way back in the spiral of the ear…” (lines 12-14)
The use of end and internal rhymes in “tear” and “ear” deftly signal the interior processes involved in both hearing and emotional response. The image of the voice breaking reminds the reader of male adolescence and the fact that this is a time in life when a young man tends to flex his muscles, clash with his father and look for ways of expressing his identity that are radically different from those of the previous generation. The “spiral of the ear” is the cochlea and is a clever image to use as one is able to imagine the ‘sight’ of the sound of the father’s voice trapped somewhere in it lie an archive and being released many years later, just as water is released if it enters the ear when we go swimming.
The way offspring choose to dress and the youth subculture that is so much bound up with styles of dress and the wearing of jewellery has been a reality ever since the concept of teenage and adolescence had an impact in the 1950s. This youth identity was, from the outset identified with music of rock and roll and in films by the archetypal figure of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.
The incident described in the poem would set it in the 1970s when Punk Rock was blowing away the cobwebs of what it thought were the rock “dinosaurs” like Genesis and Led Zeppelin. Punk rockers wore safety pins through their ears. The speaker in the poem “didn’t have the nerve” to pierce his own ear or wear a safety pin but opted for a “ring of silver”, a compromise that was made worse by the fact the that ring was “half hidden by a mop of hair” (line 3).
This poem is a fine study of the shifting relationship between father and son.
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Michael Woods writes about Homecoming
This poem deals with the complexity of family and romantic relationships and the way they change or endure. The frame of the poem is a memory of two things that become fused in the speaker’s mind in much the same way as a poet fuses ideas in a metaphor. In fact, Armitage’s opening line is a diagram of what poet’s do with language when they forge metaphors from apparently disparate ideas. In doing this, Armitage is drawing attention to his own craft, alerting the reader to “two things on their own” that may have autonomous and separate identities but also “both at once” so that they become fused and consequently more significant in relation to one another.
The opening word, “Think” requires the reader to be at mental attention. Armitage is preparing us for the kind of imaginative thought process that creates metaphors. The two separate things Armitage presents are a trust game and a yellow cotton jacket.
The first stanza draws attention to, and then describes, the game with which many of us will be familiar. One person spreads their arms and allows themselves to fall backwards, trusting that those behind them will catch her or him. The person investing the trust is described as being in “free-fall” like a parachutist who has just jumped out of an aeroplane and is in that phase of the drop before the chute opens – it is an experience filled with both fear and exhilaration; a leap into the unknown that requires absolute “blind” faith.
Stanza two introduces the second thing, “one canary-yellow cotton jacket”. The garment is owned by a child who discovers it “scuffed and blackened underfoot” (line 7) in the school cloakroom. “Back home” (line 7) the child’s mother thinks the child has been neglectful of the jacket. The ensuing conflict between mother and child is conveyed convincingly through a series of images and phrases that make the situation familiar to the reader. The speaker’s mother is “the very model of a model of a mother” which humorously takes the words of Major General Stanley a famous Gilbert and Sullivan operetta character in The Pirates of Penzance who sings: “I am the very model of a modern major general”. Armitage humorously aligns the mother with a figure of military authority but modifies the words of the song to convey the speaker’s rueful resignation to the fact that his mother is not just a “model” of a mother but a model for all models. The first “homecoming” related in the poem is fraught. The phrase “makes a proper fist of it” is ambiguous as to “make a proper fist” of something is a colloquialism for making a good attempt at it. Here, the idea of being a “model” mother, an example to all mothers, is undermined because the clear implication is that the situation is turned into violence against the child. The use of the word “yours” in line 8 alerts us to the sound of the poem being read aloud to an audience. The commas either side of “yours” indicate the timing of delivery and signal for us the comic effect this is likely to have ‘live’. We should not forget that Simon Armitage is a consummate performer of his poems. This sort of detail reminds us that poems need to be read aloud in our heads, even if we do not speak them aloud with our voices. Another phrase, “points the finger” (line 10) creates the visual image of the mother’s accusation of the child whilst simultaneously suggesting something of a detective accusing a criminal. The next two word sentence, “Temper, temper.” is again likely to raise a laugh with an audience depending on its pace and tone of delivery but it also introduces further ambiguity. Although the words are familiar to us as those used by an adult remonstrating with a naughty child, it seems that Armitage is inviting us to think of the mother’s temper who, it seems, in terms of the evidence presented, has falsely accused the child of negligence. The next sentence comically aggrandises the investigation into how a coat became dirty to the status of a parliamentary enquiry. “Questions / in the house” is the term used to describe proceedings in the House of Commons and reinforces the way the mother is blowing a trivial incident out of all proportion. The climax of the antagonism between mother and child is drawn using more well know phrases. The speaker is described as “seeing red” (line 11), while the crescendo of the row is “Blue murder”. The use of colour in them reminds us of the opposing parties in parliament. The Labour Party’s colour is red and the Conservative’s is blue. The mother has the power, though and the single word sentence, “Bed.” says a great deal about the way adults impose their wills on children. The reader is left wondering about the apparent injustice of the situation.
The child seems to be making a token gesture at running away from home, as so many children threaten after they feel a parent has dealt unfairly with them. Armitage, in an accurate observation humorously presents the child venturing “no further than the call box at the corner of the street” (line 13). This convincingly captures the simultaneous desire to flee mixed with the fear of doing it – just like a “free fall” parachutist, as well as wanting comfort from someone who might telephone. The child will be sixteen years older before he or she will have someone to talk to who will be able to help him or her face difficulty. Following this, Armitage again focuses upon the all too familiar scenario of a child who has been missed and being waited for by a “father figure” who “wants to set things straight”. It is noticeable that this is a “father figure” with the clear implication that the man might not be the child’s natural father. In wanting to “set things straight” he may want the child to see things in his and the mother’s way or perhaps to reconcile the child with the adults. Another alternative is that the words are a euphemism for a physical punishment. The fact the man is described “in silhouette” adds a gothic, sinister element which suggests malevolent intent. This reading is supported by the fact that the scene is set around “midnight”, the time when nasty things are traditionally abroad. This is the second “homecoming” described in the poem.
The concluding stanza returns to the jacket mentioned in the second. The garment becomes a metaphor that aligns parts of the body to features of the jacket. In this way, Armitage is sticking to the metaphorical technique whose method he sketched in the first line of the poem. Three metaphors in quick succession make this clear:
“These ribs are pleats or seams. These arms are sleeves.
These fingertips are buttons,...” (lines 18-19)
It appears that the speaker could be addressing his or her partner or mother and, perhaps, both. There is a universalised quality about what is being said because the jacket and its parts have become interchangeable with those of a person. The incident connected with the jacket, and the trust game are “two things…both at once”, brought together. Armitage seems to be saying that we need to able to rely on each other and be able to trust. Also, there is a sense that we can damage each other permanently by not trusting one another. The speaker invites the person he is addressing to “step backwards into it” as one might when a coat of jacket is being held for one but it also reminds us of the game of trust referred to in stanza one in which the subject must “free-fall / backwards”. The fact that the jacket “still fits” could mean that nothing has changed.
The opening word, “Think” requires the reader to be at mental attention. Armitage is preparing us for the kind of imaginative thought process that creates metaphors. The two separate things Armitage presents are a trust game and a yellow cotton jacket.
The first stanza draws attention to, and then describes, the game with which many of us will be familiar. One person spreads their arms and allows themselves to fall backwards, trusting that those behind them will catch her or him. The person investing the trust is described as being in “free-fall” like a parachutist who has just jumped out of an aeroplane and is in that phase of the drop before the chute opens – it is an experience filled with both fear and exhilaration; a leap into the unknown that requires absolute “blind” faith.
Stanza two introduces the second thing, “one canary-yellow cotton jacket”. The garment is owned by a child who discovers it “scuffed and blackened underfoot” (line 7) in the school cloakroom. “Back home” (line 7) the child’s mother thinks the child has been neglectful of the jacket. The ensuing conflict between mother and child is conveyed convincingly through a series of images and phrases that make the situation familiar to the reader. The speaker’s mother is “the very model of a model of a mother” which humorously takes the words of Major General Stanley a famous Gilbert and Sullivan operetta character in The Pirates of Penzance who sings: “I am the very model of a modern major general”. Armitage humorously aligns the mother with a figure of military authority but modifies the words of the song to convey the speaker’s rueful resignation to the fact that his mother is not just a “model” of a mother but a model for all models. The first “homecoming” related in the poem is fraught. The phrase “makes a proper fist of it” is ambiguous as to “make a proper fist” of something is a colloquialism for making a good attempt at it. Here, the idea of being a “model” mother, an example to all mothers, is undermined because the clear implication is that the situation is turned into violence against the child. The use of the word “yours” in line 8 alerts us to the sound of the poem being read aloud to an audience. The commas either side of “yours” indicate the timing of delivery and signal for us the comic effect this is likely to have ‘live’. We should not forget that Simon Armitage is a consummate performer of his poems. This sort of detail reminds us that poems need to be read aloud in our heads, even if we do not speak them aloud with our voices. Another phrase, “points the finger” (line 10) creates the visual image of the mother’s accusation of the child whilst simultaneously suggesting something of a detective accusing a criminal. The next two word sentence, “Temper, temper.” is again likely to raise a laugh with an audience depending on its pace and tone of delivery but it also introduces further ambiguity. Although the words are familiar to us as those used by an adult remonstrating with a naughty child, it seems that Armitage is inviting us to think of the mother’s temper who, it seems, in terms of the evidence presented, has falsely accused the child of negligence. The next sentence comically aggrandises the investigation into how a coat became dirty to the status of a parliamentary enquiry. “Questions / in the house” is the term used to describe proceedings in the House of Commons and reinforces the way the mother is blowing a trivial incident out of all proportion. The climax of the antagonism between mother and child is drawn using more well know phrases. The speaker is described as “seeing red” (line 11), while the crescendo of the row is “Blue murder”. The use of colour in them reminds us of the opposing parties in parliament. The Labour Party’s colour is red and the Conservative’s is blue. The mother has the power, though and the single word sentence, “Bed.” says a great deal about the way adults impose their wills on children. The reader is left wondering about the apparent injustice of the situation.
The child seems to be making a token gesture at running away from home, as so many children threaten after they feel a parent has dealt unfairly with them. Armitage, in an accurate observation humorously presents the child venturing “no further than the call box at the corner of the street” (line 13). This convincingly captures the simultaneous desire to flee mixed with the fear of doing it – just like a “free fall” parachutist, as well as wanting comfort from someone who might telephone. The child will be sixteen years older before he or she will have someone to talk to who will be able to help him or her face difficulty. Following this, Armitage again focuses upon the all too familiar scenario of a child who has been missed and being waited for by a “father figure” who “wants to set things straight”. It is noticeable that this is a “father figure” with the clear implication that the man might not be the child’s natural father. In wanting to “set things straight” he may want the child to see things in his and the mother’s way or perhaps to reconcile the child with the adults. Another alternative is that the words are a euphemism for a physical punishment. The fact the man is described “in silhouette” adds a gothic, sinister element which suggests malevolent intent. This reading is supported by the fact that the scene is set around “midnight”, the time when nasty things are traditionally abroad. This is the second “homecoming” described in the poem.
The concluding stanza returns to the jacket mentioned in the second. The garment becomes a metaphor that aligns parts of the body to features of the jacket. In this way, Armitage is sticking to the metaphorical technique whose method he sketched in the first line of the poem. Three metaphors in quick succession make this clear:
“These ribs are pleats or seams. These arms are sleeves.
These fingertips are buttons,...” (lines 18-19)
It appears that the speaker could be addressing his or her partner or mother and, perhaps, both. There is a universalised quality about what is being said because the jacket and its parts have become interchangeable with those of a person. The incident connected with the jacket, and the trust game are “two things…both at once”, brought together. Armitage seems to be saying that we need to able to rely on each other and be able to trust. Also, there is a sense that we can damage each other permanently by not trusting one another. The speaker invites the person he is addressing to “step backwards into it” as one might when a coat of jacket is being held for one but it also reminds us of the game of trust referred to in stanza one in which the subject must “free-fall / backwards”. The fact that the jacket “still fits” could mean that nothing has changed.
Michael Woods writes about November
This poem is a memory of driving a friend’s terminally ill grandmother to a hospital or hospice where she will die. The title of the poem not only records the time of year in which the incident happened, it is coincidentally the month that is emphatically part of winter after the dying time of autumn.
The opening of the poem takes the reader right into the middle of the action described: “We walk to the ward from the badly parked car” (line 1) is an accurate presentation of a situation in which so many people with elderly relatives find themselves. The contrast between the able bodied younger adults and the frail, elderly grandmother is evident in the fact she takes “four short steps” to their “two” (line 2). The third line begins with the first person plural pronoun “We”, just as the first did, indicating a shared experience. The end of the line indicates the shared knowledge of the couple concerned who might not articulate the reality of the situation but do not need to: “We have brought her here to die and we know it” concludes the first stanza in a stark way that states what the grandchild and the speaker do not need to say to each other. The matter of fact nature of the reality of the statement is reinforced through Armitage’s us of monosyllabic words.
The second stanza shifts the focus form “we” to “you” as the speaker is clearly someone who is sensitive to the friend’s need to minister to her last needs. The need to treat the dying with dignity is foregrounded here. The grandson (John, we assume) tends to the grandmother’s needs, ensuring that her washing things and comforting “family trinkets” are with her. The phrase “parcel her in rough blankets” conveys a sense of someone about to be dispatched somewhere just as a package is through the post; the destination will, though, be the grave. The adjective “rough” reinforces the harsh reality of the situation and this is shockingly clinched in line 6, “she sinks down into her incontinence.”
Stanza three graphically confronts what old age does to the human body in a manner that is redolent of Philip Larkin’s poem, ‘The Old Fools’. In what reads like a litany of decay, the speaker catalogues “bloodless smiles”, “slack breasts”, “stunned brains” and “baldness”. He tells his friend in a moment of recognition that so often accompanies the experience of being so close to the elderly and to death when we ourselves reach a certain age: “we are almost these monsters” (line 9). The word “monsters” may seem a very harsh word to use about other human beings but it is not necessarily to be construed as callous in this context because the speaker is clearly envisioning his own decline and that of his friend, John as dying men. Nothing is more powerful than death to remind one of one’s own mortality.
The speaker continues his concern for his friend by driving his car home for him, having recognised that he is “shattered” (line 10). This word is clearly ambiguous in its use because we are used to it being used by people who are describing how tired they feel but we sometimes use it to describe being emotionally “shattered” , and this is clearly the case with John. The “drive / through the twilight zone” has air of surreality about it as it recalls the title of a science fiction series that these friends may well have watched on television together but it also keys into the limbo-like sense that we can have after being newly bereaved. The friends “numb” themselves with alcohol as much, we sense, to try to forget their own mortality as much as to come to terms with the death of John’s grandmother.
The friends “feel the terror of the dusk begin” in a description that clearly invites us to see the falling of night-time as a metaphor for the impending death of us all. The coming of night is inevitable and unstoppable. The speaker feels impotent as the friends find themselves “failing again” to do anything about it. Whether “Inside” or “Outside”, the predicament is the same, “We can say nothing.” (line 15)
The tercets that make up the first five stanzas of this poem and that presents the reader with the experience of death, modulates into a couplet at its conclusion. For all of us it will one day “be time” but before it is we must make the most of the time we do have left and to recognise that there are bright times as well as dark ones:
Sometimes the sun spangles and we feel alive.
One thing we have to get, John, out of this life.
This closing couplet emphatically affirms life at the ends of both of its lines, “alive” and “life” remind John that life must go on. There is a sense that buried in the line is the idea that we need to make sure that we get something out of this life before we are forced to get out of it.
The opening of the poem takes the reader right into the middle of the action described: “We walk to the ward from the badly parked car” (line 1) is an accurate presentation of a situation in which so many people with elderly relatives find themselves. The contrast between the able bodied younger adults and the frail, elderly grandmother is evident in the fact she takes “four short steps” to their “two” (line 2). The third line begins with the first person plural pronoun “We”, just as the first did, indicating a shared experience. The end of the line indicates the shared knowledge of the couple concerned who might not articulate the reality of the situation but do not need to: “We have brought her here to die and we know it” concludes the first stanza in a stark way that states what the grandchild and the speaker do not need to say to each other. The matter of fact nature of the reality of the statement is reinforced through Armitage’s us of monosyllabic words.
The second stanza shifts the focus form “we” to “you” as the speaker is clearly someone who is sensitive to the friend’s need to minister to her last needs. The need to treat the dying with dignity is foregrounded here. The grandson (John, we assume) tends to the grandmother’s needs, ensuring that her washing things and comforting “family trinkets” are with her. The phrase “parcel her in rough blankets” conveys a sense of someone about to be dispatched somewhere just as a package is through the post; the destination will, though, be the grave. The adjective “rough” reinforces the harsh reality of the situation and this is shockingly clinched in line 6, “she sinks down into her incontinence.”
Stanza three graphically confronts what old age does to the human body in a manner that is redolent of Philip Larkin’s poem, ‘The Old Fools’. In what reads like a litany of decay, the speaker catalogues “bloodless smiles”, “slack breasts”, “stunned brains” and “baldness”. He tells his friend in a moment of recognition that so often accompanies the experience of being so close to the elderly and to death when we ourselves reach a certain age: “we are almost these monsters” (line 9). The word “monsters” may seem a very harsh word to use about other human beings but it is not necessarily to be construed as callous in this context because the speaker is clearly envisioning his own decline and that of his friend, John as dying men. Nothing is more powerful than death to remind one of one’s own mortality.
The speaker continues his concern for his friend by driving his car home for him, having recognised that he is “shattered” (line 10). This word is clearly ambiguous in its use because we are used to it being used by people who are describing how tired they feel but we sometimes use it to describe being emotionally “shattered” , and this is clearly the case with John. The “drive / through the twilight zone” has air of surreality about it as it recalls the title of a science fiction series that these friends may well have watched on television together but it also keys into the limbo-like sense that we can have after being newly bereaved. The friends “numb” themselves with alcohol as much, we sense, to try to forget their own mortality as much as to come to terms with the death of John’s grandmother.
The friends “feel the terror of the dusk begin” in a description that clearly invites us to see the falling of night-time as a metaphor for the impending death of us all. The coming of night is inevitable and unstoppable. The speaker feels impotent as the friends find themselves “failing again” to do anything about it. Whether “Inside” or “Outside”, the predicament is the same, “We can say nothing.” (line 15)
The tercets that make up the first five stanzas of this poem and that presents the reader with the experience of death, modulates into a couplet at its conclusion. For all of us it will one day “be time” but before it is we must make the most of the time we do have left and to recognise that there are bright times as well as dark ones:
Sometimes the sun spangles and we feel alive.
One thing we have to get, John, out of this life.
This closing couplet emphatically affirms life at the ends of both of its lines, “alive” and “life” remind John that life must go on. There is a sense that buried in the line is the idea that we need to make sure that we get something out of this life before we are forced to get out of it.
Michael Woods writes about Kid
This poem, a dramatic monologue, is written on the voice of Robin, or “The Boy Wonder” as Commissioner Gordon of Gotham City used to call him in the cult 1960s serialisation of Batman starring Burt Ward as Robin and Adam West as Batman. He is clearly felling bitter about having been separated from Batman against his will. It reads like an expose by one half of a famous duo about the other, attempting to ‘set the record straight’, something with which we are very familiar in the newspapers. The nature of Robin’s ‘revelations’ draw attention to what he claims were Batman’s neglect of him.
Robin clearly feels bitter and resentful at having been forced into the “gutter” (line 5) but proud of himself for managing to “turn the corner” after having lived through the trauma he goes on to allude to in the remainder of the poem. Robin claims he has “scotched that ‘he was like a father / to me’ rumour” (lines 6-7) as well as “blown the cover / on that ‘he was an elder brother’ / story” (lines 7-9), making it clear that Batman was neglectful towards him and that Robin felt rejected as his partner, far from being a bastion of moral virtue was a womaniser who embezzled money to fuel his lifestyle. Line 12 and 13 are written as tabloid newspaper headlines that also have the air of the cartoon about it:
“Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover.” (lines 12-13)
This alerts the reader to the idea of tawdry revelation typical of such journals but is also a comic presentation of Robin’s favourite adjective. He would frequently prefix his statements with “holy”. The sexual indiscretion of batman is a comic idea in itself when one imagines him in his outfit. He would hardly be inconspicuous unless, of course, he was meeting someone in his guise of Bruce Wayne. There is a song called “Roll Me Over in the Clover” which is an invitation to engage in intimate activity.
Robin asserts his new-found independence by asserting that he is “not playing ball any longer”, a colloquialism meaning he will not collude in keeping Batman’s good reputation intact. This involves rejecting the requirement to dress effeminately in “that off-the-shoulder / Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number” (lines 15-16) in favour of “jeans” and “jumper” (line 17). He has grown “taller, harder, stronger, older” (line 18). The preponderance of feminine rhyme in the poem may be a joke made by Armitage at the expense of Robin who is clearly keen to prove his masculine credentials.
Robin concludes by gleefully imagine Batman in decline “without a shadow” in a flat with bare cupboards and little to eat. Robins’s trademark mannerism of “punching the palm” of his hand as he worked out some clue associated wit the villainy of the various criminals he and Batman faced, will be done by Batman instead of him “all winter”, not to indicate the sudden solving of a clue, but to keep warm. Robin finishes by asserting his importance, using his old tag of “boy wonder” as a sign of superiority in contrast to his previously subordinate role.
There is no doubting the fact that Batman was what we now call a very “camp” programme. Batman and Robin were dressed in tights with briefs outside them. Some people “read” this story of an aristocrat (albeit American) and a young man taken in as his “ward” as being rather suspect. This interpretation may, of course, be incorrect.
Although this poem is ostensibly about Robin and his relationship with Batman, we know that both are fictional characters so obviously need to recognise that Armitage is reflecting upon rivalry in the general sense and the acrimony that can exist between partnerships in the public eye that only comes out long after they have professionally parted. It also reminds us that anyone can feel forced to be the “kid”, subordinate to an older sibling.
Robin clearly feels bitter and resentful at having been forced into the “gutter” (line 5) but proud of himself for managing to “turn the corner” after having lived through the trauma he goes on to allude to in the remainder of the poem. Robin claims he has “scotched that ‘he was like a father / to me’ rumour” (lines 6-7) as well as “blown the cover / on that ‘he was an elder brother’ / story” (lines 7-9), making it clear that Batman was neglectful towards him and that Robin felt rejected as his partner, far from being a bastion of moral virtue was a womaniser who embezzled money to fuel his lifestyle. Line 12 and 13 are written as tabloid newspaper headlines that also have the air of the cartoon about it:
“Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover.” (lines 12-13)
This alerts the reader to the idea of tawdry revelation typical of such journals but is also a comic presentation of Robin’s favourite adjective. He would frequently prefix his statements with “holy”. The sexual indiscretion of batman is a comic idea in itself when one imagines him in his outfit. He would hardly be inconspicuous unless, of course, he was meeting someone in his guise of Bruce Wayne. There is a song called “Roll Me Over in the Clover” which is an invitation to engage in intimate activity.
Robin asserts his new-found independence by asserting that he is “not playing ball any longer”, a colloquialism meaning he will not collude in keeping Batman’s good reputation intact. This involves rejecting the requirement to dress effeminately in “that off-the-shoulder / Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number” (lines 15-16) in favour of “jeans” and “jumper” (line 17). He has grown “taller, harder, stronger, older” (line 18). The preponderance of feminine rhyme in the poem may be a joke made by Armitage at the expense of Robin who is clearly keen to prove his masculine credentials.
Robin concludes by gleefully imagine Batman in decline “without a shadow” in a flat with bare cupboards and little to eat. Robins’s trademark mannerism of “punching the palm” of his hand as he worked out some clue associated wit the villainy of the various criminals he and Batman faced, will be done by Batman instead of him “all winter”, not to indicate the sudden solving of a clue, but to keep warm. Robin finishes by asserting his importance, using his old tag of “boy wonder” as a sign of superiority in contrast to his previously subordinate role.
There is no doubting the fact that Batman was what we now call a very “camp” programme. Batman and Robin were dressed in tights with briefs outside them. Some people “read” this story of an aristocrat (albeit American) and a young man taken in as his “ward” as being rather suspect. This interpretation may, of course, be incorrect.
Although this poem is ostensibly about Robin and his relationship with Batman, we know that both are fictional characters so obviously need to recognise that Armitage is reflecting upon rivalry in the general sense and the acrimony that can exist between partnerships in the public eye that only comes out long after they have professionally parted. It also reminds us that anyone can feel forced to be the “kid”, subordinate to an older sibling.
Michael Woods writes about Those Bastards in Their Mansions
This poem is a sonnet written as a dramatic monologue in the voice of a man who would be considered a subversive in the context of a stratified, class based society. There is a clear political message informing the poem and the final line makes it quite clear that when someone is intent on righting what he or she believes to be injustice, they are unlikely to be overt in their methods and neither will they necessarily rely on purely political processes but will use force if they feel no other means will be effective.
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
Michael Woods writes about Those Bastards in Their Mansions
This poem is a sonnet written as a dramatic monologue in the voice of a man who would be considered a subversive in the context of a stratified, class based society. There is a clear political message informing the poem and the final line makes it quite clear that when someone is intent on righting what he or she believes to be injustice, they are unlikely to be overt in their methods and neither will they necessarily rely on purely political processes but will use force if they feel no other means will be effective.
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
Michael Woods writes about I've Made Out a Will
In another sonnet taken from Book of Matches, Armitage writes in the voice of someone who has resolved, by making a will, to donate all his organs, save his heart to the National Health Service. Since this is legally binding, he is clearly in earnest.
Body parts are humorously described interchangeably with engine parts, foods and clock mechanisms. The brain is self deprecatingly “a loaf”. We are familiar with the heart as a “ticker” and we are presented with a welter of other body parts compared to other things. The blood is “a gallon of bilberry soup”, the skeleton a “chassis or cage or cathedral of bone” (lines 6-7)
The persona’s repeated insistence that his heart should be left alone “but not the heart” (line 8) and “but not the pendulum” (line 13) is emphatic. It seems that he may see the heart in a traditional way as the repository of feeling. Alternatively, it may just be an act to deliberately withhold the most sought after organ for transplant. So, in seeming to be entirely magnanimous, the speaker may not be rather curmudgeonly in life and one suspects that he will be so in a posthumous sense, too.
Body parts are humorously described interchangeably with engine parts, foods and clock mechanisms. The brain is self deprecatingly “a loaf”. We are familiar with the heart as a “ticker” and we are presented with a welter of other body parts compared to other things. The blood is “a gallon of bilberry soup”, the skeleton a “chassis or cage or cathedral of bone” (lines 6-7)
The persona’s repeated insistence that his heart should be left alone “but not the heart” (line 8) and “but not the pendulum” (line 13) is emphatic. It seems that he may see the heart in a traditional way as the repository of feeling. Alternatively, it may just be an act to deliberately withhold the most sought after organ for transplant. So, in seeming to be entirely magnanimous, the speaker may not be rather curmudgeonly in life and one suspects that he will be so in a posthumous sense, too.
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