Poem of the week: Blue Field by Lavinia Greenlaw | Poetry

Blue Field

A flood as the day releases
and the whole snow world
is neither wet nor deep, but primary.
Colour so inherent, it does not fall
but rises from my skin,
the snow, the trees, the road.
This blue isn’t built or grown.
It has no tissue, nothing
to touch or taste or bring to mind
a memory, no iris or artery,
no gentian, aconite or anemone,
no slate, plum, oil-spill or gun,
no titanium or turquoise,
no mercury or magnesium,
no phosphorous, sapphire or silver foil,
no duck egg or milk jug,
no chambray, denim or navy,
no indigo, octopus ink, no ink,
no element. The blue moment,
sininen hetki in a language that claims
no relation but greets in passing
picture blue, cyan. Ultraviolet
twilight, higher than the heaven
of swimming or flying — no splash.
A time without clouded objects,
in which you might become the glass
you swallowed through cold.
Light draws back
behind the rim of the eye as it closes.
I keep my distance, as things turn blue
through stillness and distance,
as everything blue is distant.

Lavinia Greenlaw, poet and novelist, has recently published her Selected Poems, representing six collections, from Night Photograph (1993) to The Built Moment (2019). The poem I’ve chosen is from her third, Minsk (2003), where the book’s title is an evocation of mystery rather than a particular city. The poem, Blue Field, doesn’t tell us its location but suggests a northerly landscape and light.

Light is what it seeks to conjure – light as it takes the form of the colour blue. It is the “colour” that “does not fall” (as light would) “but rises from my skin, / the snow, the trees, the road.” Cleverly the poem moves from tracing various atmospheric, disembodied qualities of the blueness to an apparent withdrawal of the attempt, a series of negations. After a short survey of the sensuous and organic associations the blue light lacks (“no tissue, nothing / to touch or taste or bring to mind / a memory, no iris or artery”), the poem plunges into an impressionistic cadenza, a dazzling attempt to list all kinds of substance the light is not like.

It’s a strange but effective device. The reader is constantly asked to imagine and delight in various tones and shadows of blue, but they are deliberately failed analogies, and we are required to dismiss them.

The lexical range is bold, the juxtaposition of sounds and images in a line suggesting numerous associative “worlds” in miniature (“no slate, plum, oil-spill or gun”, “no duck egg or milk jug”, “no indigo, octopus ink, no ink, / no element”). Perhaps intentionally, the allusions to “ink” add to the impression of a precision-loving writer’s particular difficulty in capturing such colour. As the reference to “picture blue” might imply, a photographer could have the edge over the poet in achieving the appropriate colouration.

By ending her group of “ink” words on a new line, and introducing a less determinate field of allusion with “element”, Greenlaw makes her transition to the “the blue moment” and the original Finnish phrase, “sininen hetki”. It’s a bold piece of positioning. At an earlier stage, introducing the phrase and its usual English translation might have undermined the complexity of Greenlaw’s interrogations. The phrase may greet “in passing” the contrasting blues of “picture blue and cyan” but now the poem withdraws from colour-charting towards metaphysical procedure. The earlier search is resumed: what does it feel like to exist in that visual field? What is the special, mysteriously personal joy of an “ultraviolet / twilight”?

It’s “higher than the heaven / of swimming or flying”, the poet observes, because there’s “no splash”. That jokey but perceptive comment, suggesting human flight brings its own sensation of a “splash”, pleasantly domesticates the exaltation. Then we shift to a purer, more transparent and dangerous sense of the power of the cold, and, characteristically for Greenlaw, to the value of distance. After all the glowing intensity, the speaker steps into self-containment in the timed motions of the last three lines: “I keep my distance, as things turn blue / through stillness and distance, / as everything blue is distant.” The “blue moment” seems to have only begun to happen, rather than to be a completed experience sealed in language. Perhaps it neutralises, or simply belongs with, “everything blue”. In being allowed still further elusiveness, its most essential quality is restored.

Blue Field

A flood as the day releases
and the whole snow world
is neither wet nor deep, but primary.
Colour so inherent, it does not fall
but rises from my skin,
the snow, the trees, the road.
This blue isn’t built or grown.
It has no tissue, nothing
to touch or taste or bring to mind
a memory, no iris or artery,
no gentian, aconite or anemone,
no slate, plum, oil-spill or gun,
no titanium or turquoise,
no mercury or magnesium,
no phosphorous, sapphire or silver foil,
no duck egg or milk jug,
no chambray, denim or navy,
no indigo, octopus ink, no ink,
no element. The blue moment,
sininen hetki in a language that claims
no relation but greets in passing
picture blue, cyan. Ultraviolet
twilight, higher than the heaven
of swimming or flying — no splash.
A time without clouded objects,
in which you might become the glass
you swallowed through cold.
Light draws back
behind the rim of the eye as it closes.
I keep my distance, as things turn blue
through stillness and distance,
as everything blue is distant.

Lavinia Greenlaw, poet and novelist, has recently published her Selected Poems, representing six collections, from Night Photograph (1993) to The Built Moment (2019). The poem I’ve chosen is from her third, Minsk (2003), where the book’s title is an evocation of mystery rather than a particular city. The poem, Blue Field, doesn’t tell us its location but suggests a northerly landscape and light.

Light is what it seeks to conjure – light as it takes the form of the colour blue. It is the “colour” that “does not fall” (as light would) “but rises from my skin, / the snow, the trees, the road.” Cleverly the poem moves from tracing various atmospheric, disembodied qualities of the blueness to an apparent withdrawal of the attempt, a series of negations. After a short survey of the sensuous and organic associations the blue light lacks (“no tissue, nothing / to touch or taste or bring to mind / a memory, no iris or artery”), the poem plunges into an impressionistic cadenza, a dazzling attempt to list all kinds of substance the light is not like.

It’s a strange but effective device. The reader is constantly asked to imagine and delight in various tones and shadows of blue, but they are deliberately failed analogies, and we are required to dismiss them.

The lexical range is bold, the juxtaposition of sounds and images in a line suggesting numerous associative “worlds” in miniature (“no slate, plum, oil-spill or gun”, “no duck egg or milk jug”, “no indigo, octopus ink, no ink, / no element”). Perhaps intentionally, the allusions to “ink” add to the impression of a precision-loving writer’s particular difficulty in capturing such colour. As the reference to “picture blue” might imply, a photographer could have the edge over the poet in achieving the appropriate colouration.

By ending her group of “ink” words on a new line, and introducing a less determinate field of allusion with “element”, Greenlaw makes her transition to the “the blue moment” and the original Finnish phrase, “sininen hetki”. It’s a bold piece of positioning. At an earlier stage, introducing the phrase and its usual English translation might have undermined the complexity of Greenlaw’s interrogations. The phrase may greet “in passing” the contrasting blues of “picture blue and cyan” but now the poem withdraws from colour-charting towards metaphysical procedure. The earlier search is resumed: what does it feel like to exist in that visual field? What is the special, mysteriously personal joy of an “ultraviolet / twilight”?

It’s “higher than the heaven / of swimming or flying”, the poet observes, because there’s “no splash”. That jokey but perceptive comment, suggesting human flight brings its own sensation of a “splash”, pleasantly domesticates the exaltation. Then we shift to a purer, more transparent and dangerous sense of the power of the cold, and, characteristically for Greenlaw, to the value of distance. After all the glowing intensity, the speaker steps into self-containment in the timed motions of the last three lines: “I keep my distance, as things turn blue / through stillness and distance, / as everything blue is distant.” The “blue moment” seems to have only begun to happen, rather than to be a completed experience sealed in language. Perhaps it neutralises, or simply belongs with, “everything blue”. In being allowed still further elusiveness, its most essential quality is restored.