May by A K Blakemore

For the Poem of the Month for May, I’ve chosen to write about A K Blakemore’s poem May, an obvious choice, but one that is fitting. I love this poem because it is a kind of ode to Spring, to the brightly coloured flowers and the blue skies, to beauty and to love. It is a short poem, but in true A K Blakemore style, is both sharp and observant, yet holding within it a kind of delicacy. 

It is a sort of love poem, but also not. The couplets of the first section echo the speaker and the person to whom the poem is addressed. The imagery in this section is both abstract and specific, interchanging the two with each couplet. For instance, in the second couplet, the speaker says:

fat bee on a bright brick wall
atrocious swan of love

The first of these lines is straightforward and easy to visualise, the second however, is more metaphorical, what most would call “poetic language”. This mix of high and low style is often found in Blakemore’s work, something that makes it both stylistically interesting and also relatable. Although there is little sense of place in this poem, I imagine that the first half of the poem takes place on a warm Spring morning, just as the characters in the poem awake and begin their day. I envision the “fat bee on a bright brick wall” to be something witnessed out of a window. The last two lines in this section seem to speak of the morning:

we roll apart
our grave-beds loose and hot

I think of the hot and sweaty sheets, loose and tangled on their bed. “You slid into my life”, a casual affection that seems to indicate the ease at which they exist beside each other. 

The second part of the poem shifts slightly from the first. In the first, the poem was addressed to someone (“you slid into my life…” and “we roll apart”), whereas in the second section the speaker uses the first-person pronoun to speak of themselves (“i have so many bouquets” and “which i realise…”). This shift in gear is also reflected in the final stanza of the poem, which no longer follows the couplet pattern but instead consists of five lines. This last stanza hints at an unease in the speaker’s outlook, their view of the world and of love. In this last stanza, love becomes a shield or safety net against life, a way to cocoon oneself against it. 

One thing I particularly love in this second part of the poem are the opening lines:

i have so many bouquets
it’s like somebitch died — 

I can envision the masses of flowers left on a freshly dug grave but also vases of spring flowers on every available surface in a house, on the tabletop, on the side in the kitchen, on the bedside table. I can see the vivid colours, fat petals arced around the head, their long stems with a chlorophyll seen. These two lines, that conjure all of these strong images of beauty, emphasises even further the contrast between these lines and the last stanza.

Read the poem published by The White Review here.