Blue

Leslie Anne Mcilroy:
Blue is a love poem, flat out — it seeks to capture the moment you fall for someone full body, mind and soul, knowing from the start you can’t have them, but letting yourself experience a shameless, all-consuming desire. You want it so badly but know it will come to no good. You are beautifully, recklessly in, despite. It was written for a specific person, whose eyes are extraordinarily blue, offering up a world of color/images to play with: sadness, melancholy and the classic, organic melody of the “blues.”

A narrative poem, it starts with trying to put a finger on what the blue actually is, using the repetition of “blue” to move the poem forward with a musicality of images that suggests a rhythm, a deepening. And then I did something I rarely do: the speaker questions herself: “Did I say blue? Did I say longing?” This provided a natural break in the poem, a turning, moving to the final note of recognition, futility, desperate yearning. It is a story.

What I love about the poem (if a poet is allowed to say that about her own work), is that it gets at the despondence, the storm of the unrequited — or inaccessible — love, a feeling that is part of this thing we call humanity — loss — a thing we can all relate to. It goes from the specific to the universal, allowing the reader in. Plus, I love the way it sounds. Lots of consonants that juxtaposed, have a phonetically appealing sonorous note: “wisp of silver villain,” “thunder yearn,” “want and vein.” I love poems that sound as strong as they feel.

I work at this because I believe that if one can illuminate the resonance of a poem with its emotion, it is that much more effective. I perform “Blue” with a saxophone player — Kenny Blake — who informs it with a classic blues melody from “Am I Blue.” It’s a delicious indulgence. If I were to leave you with anything, I would say, read your poems out loud. Feel them. Hear them. Sing them. Listen. And then revise. : )